“Game, set, and match, Coentrão!”
Those five words have never sounded so sweet. Fábio let the racquet fall out of his hand and sank to his knees on the soft Wimbledon grass, tears stinging his eyes. He’d been waiting for this moment all his life and yet it was so unexpected.
His opponent was waiting at the net. Fábio got up and shook his hand, the praising words muffled by the buzzing in his head. Later, he’d have to ask him what he said.
‘Call it the Battle of Nuremberg. Portugal defeated the Netherlands in a nasty and ill-tempered 1-0 brawl on 25 June 2006 that saw both teams have two players sent off. Russian referee Valentin Ivanov brandished a record 20 cards in total - 16 of them yellow.’
World Cup 2010 Memories - Portugal 7-0 North Korea
“To think that Portugal had trouble scoring goals in qualification. They were utterly ruthless here, scoring six in the second half and almost certainly sealing a place in the knockout stages. It's the second biggest victory in the World Cup since Hungary smashed El Salvador 10-1 in 1982 (the other was Germany 8-0 Saudi Arabia in 2002).”