Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal will look to take a step closer to the European Championship Final when they take on underdog Czech Republic in the first quarterfinal of the tournament (2:45pm, ESPN).
The Portuguese rallied to finish second in the tournament's Group of Death, and looked impressive doing so. Ronaldo found his form in the decisive win against the Netherlands and should be a threat yet again.
The Czech Republic will be the underdog despite having won a group that included Russia and host Poland. The Czechs have carried impressive flank play and some timely finishing into the quarters, where they are the biggest underdog in the field. They will need their impressive fullbacks to contain Ronaldo and Nani to have any chance of stopping Portugal today.
If you will be watching today's quarterfinal, please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.
Enjoy the action.
He bested Muller’s total by six goals, but he played twelve more games. I’d hardly consider that “shattering” the record. And Barca lost the league and didn’t even make the CL final. I’m sure Messi himself would tell you that the season was a disappointment.
Surely this is some joke I don’t understand? Ronaldo is a great free kick taker.
Yes, the greatest season ever. He broke the world scoring record. He not only broke it, he shattered it. It was indisputably the greatest single season in professional football history.
He ALSO was the Champions League leading scorer and broke the single season CL scoring record.
Those “third rate” teams were 6 out of the 8 semifinalists in the the two major European competitions.
They won Copa del Rey, the Spanish Super Cup (beating Madrid), the Euro Super Cup, and the Club World Cup that you can only get to by winning the Champions League the year before.
Greatest season? Nah, that was last year. Hard to call it the greatest season when you don’t win meaningful titles. I’m sure he’d agree that leasing the league is scoring and winning the league and CL was a much better season than racking up goals on third rate teams and winning only Copa del Rey.
Probably not that long ago but he is a horrible free kick taker.
Its all the teams sponsored by Puma. I agree they look terrible.
That was just an awful corner. Entire team, including Petr Cech, is in the box and you blast it well over everyone?
That about sums up the Czech performance: awful.
If he is watching he probably clapped or something, the guy is quite humble.
Doubt much of anything really impresses him give that he just had the greatest season in the history of football and arguably one of the greatest seasons in sports history.
Ronaldo follows up his nice header with a gross flop right in front of the official. It’s really difficult to enjoy this guy.
Clinical finish. Ronaldo just took the Czech Republic defense to school.
I wonder if Messi was impressed?
Great header from Ronaldo! Much deserved.
It’s amazing that the Czech Republic made it out of the group stage. They are not very good at all.
There it is!
Almeida is just an awful player. Bad form, low intelligence . . . hard to be a major step down from Postiga.
Looks like he got 5 of his 60 this year for Real Madrid from free kicks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHPqSBBJwk
When was the last time Ronaldo actually scored a free kick?
Why do so many of the jerseys at the Euros this year look like the numbers have just been taped on. Is this part of austerity, saving money on printing by using duct tape? Or is this for the fans, so they can just tape on the number of their favorite player rather than spending the extra 10 euros?
Klinnsman in the BBC studio for the halftime show.
I take back what I’ve said about Ronaldo being the worst whiner. Nani is much, much worse.
Great bicycle attempt by Ronaldo!
Portugal is straight up THUGGING this match. Holy crap.