On Saturday 14th November 2009, Portugal play Bosnia-Herzegovina in the first leg of their World Cup playoff. This is a really tough one to predict for me, as Portugal have really struggled in the group stage and Bosnia appear to have a strong side. Sports retailers will certainly be hoping for a Portuguese victory, as they are likely to be one of the best selling World Cup Jerseys likely to be among the best selling kits next summer. Before we look at the two teams in more depth, let's take a look at their qualifying performance in the group stage.

The first thing that comes to mind when comparing the group tables is that many people will feel that Bosnia performed very well and Portugal underachieved. I would certainly have predicted Portugal to finish top of Group 1, but they were only a loss away from finishing 4th!. I would anticipate that Carlos Queiroz will lose his position if those playing in a Portugal World Cup jersey do not qualify for the World Cup. In Group 5, Bosnia-Herzegovina finished behind Spain, but managed to finish ahead of nations like Turkey and Belgium.

Portugal have far more household names than Bosnia after you compare their squads, but if you look closer at the statistics of a couple of Bosnia players, you will see that they have some danger players. Bosnia have two Wolfsburg players in their team, a team that have performed quite well in the Champions League this season. The first is midfielder Zvjezdan Misimovic, who has scored 16 goals in 46 appearances for his country. The second is striker Edin Dzeko, who has an impressive record of 14 goals in 21 international appearances. PAOK striker Zlatan Muslimovic has an even better goalscoring record with 13 goals in 19 games for Bosnia. These are clearly players that Portugal will need to look out for. Portugal have world class players at their disposal, such as Ricardo Carvalho, Pepe, Deco, Joao Moutinho and Cristiano Ronaldo, but although Ronaldo will be travelling with squad (much to the delight of Real Madrid!), he is nowhere near fit and is unlikely to feature much, if at all.

I will predict that Portugal will just scrape through this World Cup playoff, but unless they play to their full potential, Bosnia will be the ones heading to South Africa in June.

Written by Stephen Whiteford, a sports writer who blogs about the 2010 World Cup.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment Preview