The European Championship has been delayed by 12 months until the summer of 2021, but that could be good news for Portugal. Manager Fernando Santos is blessed with several young and talented players that appear ready to break through and make an impact at the tournament.

No Seleção fan will forget the crucial roles played by Renato Sanches, João Mário and Raphaël Guerreiro in the Euro 2016 triumph, who were 18, 23 and 22 years old respectively at the time. Here are six players who will be aiming to make a similar impact when Portugal defend the trophy in one year’s time. 

Portugal coach Fernando Santos has had his contract renewed as head coach of the Seleção until 2024.

The 65-year-old will therefore lead his team’s defence of the European Championship and the Nations League, two trophies won under Santos, making him Portugal’s most successful ever coach.

He will also be in the dugout for World Cup 2022 in Qatar and oversee qualification (at least) for Euro 2024. 

It would have been this past weekend. In an alternate universe in which COVID-19 was merely the stuff of nightmares rather than the very real plague on our existence it has become, Fernando Santos would have announced the 23-man squad set to defend the European Championship.

As it is, Portugal internationals will have another year of football to make the grade, but who would have made the Fernando Santos cut if – you know – the calamitous events of 2020 had never transpired?

Seleção expert Nathan Motz discusses the squad that might have been….the squad that in fact, will never be.

That many Portuguese football fans nurture a lingering sense of injustice and distrust for the English media can be traced back to the summer of 2006. In Gelsenkirchen, Portugal and England went head to head for the third time in four tournaments with a huge prize at stake: a place in the World Cup semi-finals.

The Seleção eventually won in a penalty shootout, but the game is remembered mainly for the red card issued to Wayne Rooney for stamping on Ricardo Carvalho’s private parts. TV replays shows the Argentine referee Horacio Elizondo was spot on with the decision, but much of the UK media vilified the role played by Rooney’s then Manchester United teammate Cristiano Ronaldo.

Rooney himself has now set the record straight in his column in the Sunday Times, saying: “I would have done the same thing in Ronaldo’s shoes.”