Portugal Must Find Correct Midfield Balance Without Carvalho

This is a Portugal side that seems determined to be counter-intuitive. They have two players in Nani and Cristiano Ronaldo who have, over their careers, become noted for their reluctance to track back and yet Portugal in the knockout stages have looked as defensively resolute as anyone – and that despite looking shambolic at the back in the group stage.

They’re also a team that manages to be simultaneously too old and inexperienced. They have eight outfield players who are 30 or over and eight who are 24 or younger. And for all the obvious talent of Cristiano Ronaldo, for all the impact he had in that Hungary game, the real strength of this Portugal team has been the younger players at the back of midfield – or, more specifically their organisation.

In the four hours of the knockout games against Croatia and Poland, Portugal conceded just one goal and five shots on target. In the 3-3 draw against Hungary they’d yielded five shots on target. What’s intriguing is that Hungary had only nine shots in total whereas Poland and Croatia between them had 31. It’s a small sample size, of course, but that suggests the way Portugal have begun to defend their box, how they’ve become better and better at holding opponents at arm’s length, reducing them to speculative shots from range.

It’s also, of course indicative of the wider dynamic of this tournament of proactive against reactive. Teams seem very quick to settle into their respective roles – and what is clear is that the vast majority of them have preferred to strike on the counter-attack. One of the reasons Portugal struggled against Hungary was that that was a game they might have had to win to qualify. They had to come out and play and they seemed to struggle to reconcile that with retaining a level of defensive solidity. Almost every ball forward caused problems.

But before Wales, who have a far more potent strike force than Hungary, get too excited, there’s little chance Portugal will take the initiative against them. This, in fact, could be an attritional battle of two sides waiting for the other to do something.

Key to Portugal’s tightening up has been William Carvalho, who is suspended for the semi-final. He is not particularly easy on the eye, a big clanking presence in front of the back four, but despite his apparent clumsiness, he has completed 88.9% of passes in the tournament. He’s also averaging 2.8 tackles and 1.5 interceptions per game. Danilo Pereira will presumably come for him. He’s a more fluent player, somebody whose touch looks smoother than Carvalho’s, but he perhaps lacks the positional sense of the more experienced player.

In the last two games, Carvalho has been the deepest-lying midfielder with Adrien Silva in front of him in the centre. In theory, he’s a creator, but he’s averaging just one key pass per game while making an average of 2.0 tackles and 2.0 interceptions.

Joao Mario who has started each of the last two games on the right, is averaging 1.6 tackles per game in the tournament, while the players who’ve shared the left-sided role, Andre Gomes and Renato Sanches have made 1.8 and 1.5 tackles and 1.3 and 0.8 interceptions respectively. With his driving runs, it’s been Sanches who has caught the eye, but he’s been less defensively involved than the other midfielders. For Fernando Santos, the coach, there’s a choice to be made between his usefulness in connecting back to front and breaking the rigid lines on the one hand and maintaining the bite of the midfield on the other.

Against Wales, the probability is he’ll opt for the former and at least allow some attacking drive. When you have a player like Ronaldo, and when the defence has been so shaky, perhaps keeping things tight and waiting for him to do something brilliant is a sensible policy.

How will Portugal cope without Carvalho against Wales? Let us know in the comments below