FIFA World Cup 2014: Portugal need more than Cristiano Ronaldo to flourish
Lisbon: Portugal's troubles in the World Cup qualifiers have shown that they will need a lot more than an on-song Cristiano Ronaldo to mount a serious challenge in Brazil.
Although they can beat any team on their day, Portugal are prone to unexplained lapses and can be chronically wasteful in attack. Portugal reached Brazil in style with Ronaldo netting all their goals over the two legs of a memorable 4-2 aggregate playoff win over Sweden.
But that performance masked a difficult qualification campaign in which they were held to unexpected draws by Northern Ireland and Israel and forced into the drama of a two-leg playoff after losing Group F's top spot to Russia.
It could have been even worse had Ronaldo not dug them out of a hole in the match away to Northern Ireland, scoring a second-half hat-trick in a 4-2 win after they had trailed 2-1 and been reduced to 10 men.
"We certainly had an inconsistent campaign. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have had to contest a playoff," said coach Paulo Bento.
Worryingly for Portugal, Ronaldo has suffered some nagging minor injuries in the run-up to the World Cup and was rested for their friendly against Greece in Lisbon and Portugal's training sessions after complaining of muscular pain in his left thigh.
After years of basing their game around a playmaker, firstly Rui Costa and then Deco, Portugal have changed their style to try and get the best out of Ronaldo.
Although they traditionally play a possession game, under Bento they have started to mix this with long passes into space for Ronaldo and Nani to run on to.
For a small country, Portugal have had an exceptional record at big tournaments over the past decade, reaching the final at Euro 2004, the semi-finals at the 2006 World Cup, the quarter-finals of Euro 2008 and the semi-finals of Euro 2012.
Portugal will certainly want to leave a better impressionthan they did in South Africa when they were involved in petulant goalless draws against Ivory Coast and Brazil.
They bowed out after a negative performance in a 1-0 defeat to Spain, marred by an incident at the end when Ronaldo appeared to spit at a television camera.
