Soccer/Spain - 0 Portugal - 1: Did they have a hot time in the old town last night? Well, the Barrio Alto isn't quite so alto this morning. The fado players are hungover and when they come to last night will seem quite fado fado.
The echoes of car horns and klaxons are just fading but nobody awakes, nobody works, nobody stirs. Last nights fun. This mornings lie in. Liberation! And somewhere a bus with twenty three highly paid Spanish footballers aboard wends through the narrow streets and east along the highway to home. Sssshhhh! Poor Spain. Happened again. Another relapse. One minute they have the world in a bottle the stopper in the other hand. They arrive as contenders, contenders all the time. They leave picking glass out of their flesh and dirt from their teeth, crooning, Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime.
Such calamities don't allow room for dignity and this latest humiliation comes at a neighbour's party. The hosts themselves escorted the Spanish off the premises. The wounds are richly salted of course by the knowledge that this is a party the Spanish tried hard to host themslves. Or maybe that just adds some releif.
For the Portuguese this morning one hundred years of pestilence and famine would be a small price to pay for the relief that they feel. 1-0. Never has such a slender margin meant so much.
Having choked in their opening game they can scarcely have been breathing comfortably yesterday evening as a helicopter flying overhead broadcast live pictures of their team coach driving through Lisbon to the ground. While the confident Spanish made fiesta in the squares around Lisbon the Portuguse wore their scarves and crossed their fingers.
For the past few days this has been a nation paralysed by fear. Suppose, just suppose the sky fell in. Not long after half nine last night the final Group A table was flashed up onto the large scoreboards. Portugal top. Spain going home. A blue celinng on the world again. Adios Espana! The Portuguese press a downbeat crew for whom the best of times are always slimly partioned from the worst of times debated in anguish before hand as to whether Scolari would rest his faith in the greying vestiges of the golden generation or shoot for the moon and go with the kids. Scolari mulled ver his options knowing that neither decision would spare him the firing squad if things went awry.
In the end he went with happy meal children. Couto and Rui Costa sat on the bench playing whist with the other old guys. If they complained of the draught nagging their old bones it was just the wind from Deco and Cristiano Ronaldo whistling past.
In the first twenty five to thirty minutes last night the Portugiese saw the future. Deco and Ronaldo were irresistable. Ronaldo in particular turned in the sort of performance which will have him linked with Chelsea by the morning. Again and again he went past albelda and Raul Bravo like a skier slaloming down a hill. After just six minutes Albelda had run out of ideas and was booked for hacking the kid down.
If Ronaldo was everything which Alex Ferguson would wish him to be Deco wasn't far behind and as the game grew so did he, his contribution over the ninety minutes possibly being he msot significant of all. He played with wild exuberance and dancing feet and at times it was possible to feel sympathy for poor old Luis Figo waiting with dignity out on the left wing like a concert violinist whose colleagues have suddenly discovered the joy of rap.
If Figo had little to do in that frantic opening period nobody cared. It rained goal chances. Balls ricocheted around the goalmouth, scraped paint off the posts, made bruises in goalies chests. The stadium rattled and hummed. This was what they had come for. Miguel had a swerver saved well by Casillas. Valente cleared a Raul effort from the Portuguese goal mouth.. Portugal were edging affairs in the centre of midfield though where Deco's energy was supplemented by Maniche's aggression.
Of course the Spanish provide fertile soil for the nurturing of wonderkids as well and the latest of these Fernando Torres is charged with the awesome responsibility of helping Spain metamorphose from the dark horses of preview cliché into a team with some of achievement to their credit.
He showed flashes last night of what he is capable of but unfortuntely the fine Portuguese centre half Jorge Andrade appeared to be attached to Torres by means of a short piece of elastic. Every time Torres moved last night Andrade would be snapped forward and the ball cleared before Torres knew what had hit him.
For all that the game crackled and sparked neither team could gain control and after much huffing and puffing the game settled into a pattern until half time. In this period you feared for Portugal the most. Their precocity seemed easily flattered into nonchalance and the Spanish looked wolfish on thos eoccassions when they suddenly up the tempo again.
Nobody ever said however that Big Phil Scolari won the last world Cup by fluke. At half time he removed Pauleta from the game and stuck Nuno Gomes into the action. Now plying his trade in Lisbon, down the road with Benfica in fact, Gomes immediately looked sharper, the sort of foil which Ronadlo and Deco needed.
It took just twelve minutes for the move to pay off. A prod from Deco infield towards Figo whose wise ball found Gomes. He turned drove the ball through the legs of Juanito and into the far corner of the net some twenty one yards away. Figo followed in grabbed the ball and hoofed it joyously into the crowd who were already in such tumult they scarcely noticed.
After that a wild night got crazier. Torres was suddenly stretching the space between himself and Andrade and missed two sterling chances. Yet as the Spanish opened up, they left themselves exposed. For every chance they created Portugal matched them. Figo. Maniche (twice) and late on Gomes all had chances to jab the last picador home.
Time roleld on. The later it got the more desperate and wild the Spanish became. Juanito was rooted out of defence and Morientes , a forward sent in to replace him. The percussive chant rocked the turf PORT-U-GAL! PORT-U-GAL! Nothing was inevitable and yet everything was. Portugal prevailed. Saved their own party. And dark Spanish eyes clouded over. Once more. Dark horses to dray horses in ninety minutes. Same old, same old.
