Neto released early by Portugal; Lavia injury concern for Belgium
Today at 02:39 AM
International duties and taxes
Pedro Neto scored in Portugal's 5-1 win over Poland on Friday, and that result combined with Scotland beating Croatia (!) means that Portugal are guaranteed to finish top of their group and qualify for the Nations League quarterfinals — thus rendering Monday's game against Croatia absolutely meaningless.
To add some meaning back in, manager Roberto Martínez has decided to experiment with his lineup, and has allowed four of usual key players to go back to their clubs early. This includes Neto, which is great news for us.
"It's important for us to be first – and we already are. We need to be competitive to add to the group, it's getting harder and harder to get into the starting eleven. There's a World Cup finals in 18 months [...] we need to look at other players. We're going to let go of Bernardo Silva, Pedro Neto, Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes, who is suspended..."
-Roberto Martínez; source: Metro
João Félix and Renato Veiga remain with the team.
While Neto is now safe, we've already had plenty of injury-related worries this break, with Cole Palmer, Levi Colwill, Malo Gusto, and Wesley Fofana withdrawing from their respective nations' squads before any ball was even kicked in anger. Hopefully all those were just precautionary, and hopefully that's also the case with Roméo Lavia, who's now set to miss both of Belgium's games.
He was a surprise absentee for the first game — announced as part of the matchday squad, but then not actually appearing on the substitutes bench — and now under fire head coach Domenico Tedesco has confirmed (or at least claimed) that Lavia's among several of his players who are dealing with injuries.
"Some players had problems immediately after the [last] game, and we already knew in the evening that they would not be available. Then there were injuries today like Roméo Lavia. [...] Lukaku has a knee problem, he felt it after the game. It was not agreed before that he would leave after a game. [Arthur] Theate and Lavia have hamstring problems. [Maxim] De Cuyper has an inflamed Achilles tendon. So they are all injured."
-Domenico Tedesco; source: Le Soir via Google Translate
There have been some suggestions that the players just pulled out of the squad not wanting to play for Tedesco, or some such, but the coach has dismissed that sort of silliness.
And that's not great news for us.
