Portugal are very motivated after the superb and painful victory against Turkey where they won by 3-1, but with 2-1 in score Burak Yilmaz missed a penalty after a mistake by Jose Fonte. In the last game, the coach Fernando Santos did an unexpected change, in the goalkeeper - he decided to replace Rui Patricio who is the main goalkeeper of Portugal since 2010 and put Diogo Costa on his first international game and decided to put the midfielder Otavio instead of Joao Felix - both mainly because Portugal was going to play in Estadio do Dragao where they play every 2 weeks as they play for FC Porto and they showed to be very confident, Diogo Costa made important saves and put some pressure on Yilmaz to miss the penalty and Otavio scored the 1st goal and assisted the 2nd. For this game they have very important news, the best centre-back ever for Portugal is back and able to play - Pepe and for sure he will start as they will play again at home in the same stadium, so we will have 3 players from FC Porto in the starting XI, Diogo Costa, Pepe and Otavio. Pepe is a very important player for Portugal and on his back training, when he entered the pitch the best portuguese player of all time Cristiano Ronaldo said "The king is back!" - so this means the importance of a player like Pepe. And the best right-defender in the world or atleast one of the best 2 right-defenders (with Trent Alexander-Arnold) Joao Cancelo is back from suspension and for sure will start replacing Diogo Dalot who made some mistakes against Turkey. I expect the same line-up as the first game without Diogo Dalot for Cancelo and without Danilo Pereira for Pepe. I expect Portugal to dominate the whole game, with ball and pressing very high with Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva and Otavio pressing a lot the North Macedonia's defenders. It will be tough to score the 1st goal, but that's why Portugal will need to play with 3 very cerebral players in midfielder to unlock their defense, Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva probably the best player of this season in my opinion and Joao Moutinho or Vitinha, I do not rule out his entry in the starting XI - another player from Porto, being the best midfielder in Portugal with Matheus Nunes and can be very helpful to discover the spaces that Portugal want to attack. I am pretty sure that Cristiano Ronaldo will score atleast 1 goal as he always do in the finals or the most important games. In the last play-off that Portugal was in 2014 they played against Sweden and Cristiano scored 4 of 4 goals that Portugal scored in both legs. The tickets were released 1 day after the win against Turkey and it took only 5 hours to run out and so we will have another full stadium here.

Probable line-up: Diogo Costa; Joao Cancelo - Pepe - Jose Fonte - Raphael Guerreiro; Joao Moutinho/Vitinha - Bruno Fernandes - Bernardo Silva; Diogo Jota - Otavio and Cristiano Ronaldo.

North Macedonia are one step from doing history in the first year without Goran Pandev who qualified them for the last Euro 2020. While everyone was expecting to see a Portugal vs Italy in the final, North Macedonia were totally focused on the game in Palermo to try to make the surprise of the night and they did it. If we look only into match stats we can see that Italy made 35 shots against 3 from North Macedonia, but from those 35 shots I cannot remember a clear goal chance. The mentality of Italy players was terrible and they thought it would be just a question of time to beat them and after the minute 75 we could see the nervousness of Mancini's team and then in the 92nd minute the amazing shot from Trajkovski, honestly that goal reminded me of Eder's goal against France in the final of Euro 2016, an amazing shot outside the box to beat Donnarumma. They have some good and bad news, good ones are that Elmas and Kostadinov are back from suspension and can play this important game, the bad news are that Boban Nikolov felt pain against Itally and was taken off injured and probably cannot play tomorrow and the same happened to Arijan Ademi. I cannot see North Macedonia having more than 30% of ball possession for this game, and will be very tough for them to create chances to Portugal and I think that if they suffer the 1st goal in the first 30 minutes we can see Portugal winning by 3 or 4 goals easily.

Probable line-up: Dimitrievski; Stefan Ristovski - Velkovski - Musliu - Alioski; Elmas - Kostadinov - Bardhi; Churlinov - Ristovski and Trajkovski.

葡萄牙在对阵土耳其的比赛中以 3-1 取胜，取得了巨大而痛苦的胜利，葡萄牙人非常有动力，但在何塞·冯特的失误后，布拉克·耶尔马兹在 2-1 领先的情况下错过了点球。上一场比赛，主帅费尔南多-桑托斯做了一个出人意料的改变，在门将上——他决定换掉从2010年开始担任葡萄牙主力门将的帕特里西奥，让迪奥戈-科斯塔参加自己的首场国际比赛，并决定换上中场奥塔维奥。 Joao Felix - 在 Estadio do Dragao 球场比赛，他们每两周为波尔图足球俱乐部比赛，他们表现出非常自信，Diogo Costa 做出了重要的扑救，并向 Yilmaz 施加了压力，让他罚失了点球，奥塔维奥打进第1球，助攻第2。对于这场比赛，他们有一个非常重要的消息，葡萄牙有史以来最好的中后卫回来了，并且能够上场 - 佩佩，他肯定会首发。他们将在同一个球场再次在主场比赛，所以我们将有 3 名首发球员来自波尔图，迪奥戈·科斯塔、佩佩和奥塔维奥。佩佩是葡萄牙非常重要的球员，在他的训练中，当他进入球场时，有史以来最好的葡萄牙球员克里斯蒂亚诺·罗纳尔多说：“国王回来了！” - 所以这意味着像佩佩这样的球员的重要性。世界上最好的右后卫或至少最好的两名右后卫之一（与特伦特亚历山大 - 阿诺德）若昂坎塞洛从停赛中回归，肯定会取代在对阵土耳其时犯了一些错误的迪奥戈达洛特。其他位置应该与第一场比赛相同，迪奥戈·达洛特换坎塞洛，达尼洛佩雷拉换下佩佩。我预计葡萄牙会在整场比赛中占据主导地位，布鲁诺·费尔南德斯、贝尔纳多·席尔瓦和奥塔维奥对北马其顿的后卫施加了很大的压力。打进第一个进球会很困难，但这就是为什么葡萄牙需要在中场球员中使用 3 名非常聪明的球员来解锁他们的防守，布鲁诺费尔南德斯，贝尔纳多-席尔瓦。在我看来，席尔瓦可能是本赛季最好的球员，若奥·穆蒂尼奥或维蒂尼亚在竞争一个位置，不排除他进入首发阵容——另一位来自波尔图的球员，与马修斯·努内斯都是是葡萄牙最好的中场球员，他对葡萄牙的进攻空间很有帮助。我很确定克里斯蒂亚诺·罗纳尔多会像他在决赛或最重要的比赛中所做的那样至少打进 1 球。葡萄牙在2014年的最后一场附加赛中对阵瑞典，克里斯蒂亚诺打进了葡萄牙双回合的4个球。门票是在战胜土耳其后 1 天发行的，只用了 5 个小时就用完了，所以整个体育场都会支持葡萄牙。

北马其顿距离在缺少戈兰·潘德夫（Goran Pandev）的情况下向着创造历史迈出一步。虽然每个人都期待在决赛中看到葡萄牙对意大利，但北马其顿在巴勒莫的比赛制造了惊喜，他们做到了。如果我们只看比赛数据，可以看到意大利有 35 次射门，而北马其顿只有 3 次射门，但从这 35 次射门中，我不记得有一个明确的进球机会。意大利球员的心态很糟糕，他们认为击败北马其顿只是时间问题，在第 75 分钟之后，我们可以看到曼奇尼的球队的紧张情绪，然后在第 92 分钟，特拉伊科夫斯基的精彩射门，老实说那个进球让球想起了埃德在 2016 年欧洲杯决赛中对阵法国的进球，这是一个惊人的大禁区外的射门，洞穿了多纳鲁马的球门。他们有一些好消息和坏消息，好消息是 Elmas 和 Kostadinov 从停赛中回归，可以参加这场重要的比赛，坏消息是，博班·尼科洛夫在对阵意大利的比赛中感到疼痛，受伤下场，明天可能无法上场，阿里扬·阿德米也发生了同样的情况。我不认为北马其顿在这场比赛中拥有超过 30% 的控球率，他们将很难在葡萄牙身上创造机会，我认为如果他们在前 30 分钟内遭遇第一个进球，看到葡萄牙最终会以3或4个球的差距获胜。