Portugal will be looking to build on the good start to the Fernando Santos era when they take on Armenia in the Algarve on Friday evening in a Euro 2016 Group I qualifier. 

Armenia may have only one point from two games so far, but Santos was at pains to warn against underestimating the team who boast a player of the quality of Henrikh Mkhitaryan (pictured).

Armenian football journalist Vera Martirosyan brings us the lowdown on what the Seleção can expect from the Eurasian nation.

Raphael Guerreiro and Tiago Gomes also make squad

Portugal coach Fernando Santos has again shown he is prepared to pick from a broad pool of players - in sharp contrast to his predecessor Paulo Bento - with call-ups for José Bosingwa, Raphael Guerreiro and Tiago Gomes.

The defenders are drafted in owing to injuries ruling out Portugal's three first-choice left-backs, Coentrão, Eliseu and Antunes.

There is also a recall for striker Hélder Postiga for the Euro 2016 qualifier against Armenia and the friendly international against Argentina.

Changing of the guard signals exciting future for Seleção

Portugal’s slump in fortunes after Euro 2012 led to several portents of gloom suggesting the talent well had dried up for the national team. The steady flow of high-quality players, which began with the two-time U20 World Cup winning Golden Generation of the late 1980s, had run dry, we were constantly told.

Where were the likes of Paulo Sousa, Luís Figo, Rui Costa and Deco, undoubtedly world-class performers of the very highest calibre who had graced the Seleção shirt over the past two decades?

Well, a closer look, especially in the light of the U-21 team’s unstoppable form, suggests the Seleção are on the cusp of another richly talented generation of midfielders. In fact, you can make a good argument that Portugal will soon be spoilt for choice in that specific area of the pitch.

Yesterday, during my daily routine (a personal addiction, I confess) of scouring the net for the latest and greatest football news, I encountered a succession of articles in tribute to Lionel Messi’s 10 year anniversary as a Barcelona player. The ESPN FC blogs alone featured no less than five individual posts on the subject, with Yahoo news, the Daily Mail, and many other football tabloids running stories in honor of a decade of Messi’s influence on the sport of football.

Let me just say upfront that this editorial is not an invective against Messi, Barcelona, or any other individual entity or organization that praises Messi for what he is: a great footballer. Rather, it laments the underdeveloped capacity of the football community to truly appreciate what we call “greatness.” It’s not that we don’t talk about it. No, we are endlessly comparing statistics, measuring individual performances, even appraising the personalities of those players that we call “the greats” in an effort to determine who is the greatest.