Will Portugal Quality?? Well, this time around Portugal will not have to qualify. All they have to do is play a bunch of friendly games until everyone else go through hell of qualification and then just cruise to win on home ground. Yeah, as if it were this easy!! In Euro 1996., Portugal were in group with Croatia, Denmark and Turkey. Then they qualified for the second round, where they were stopped by later surprise finalists Czech Republic. In the last Euro, they were the surprise team. With likes of Figo, Rui Costa, Conceicao, Xavier, Couto & others, they sliced through group stage with three victories over England, Romania and Germany! They went to the semi-finals but lost in extra time on a very suspicious penalty awarded to the French! Well, the World Cup is a perfect (read "last") opportunity for this team (read "generation"). And so to the WC, where Portugal came as a favourite, because they were undefeated in a qualifying group with Ireland and Holland (who, by the way, failed to qualify)! They began with a catastophical first 45 minutes against the USA. So they lost 3-2 (saved a little dignity with those two goals). In game two they showed that the USA game was just a bad day and won 4-0. So the decisive game against the host South Korea came. And it wasn't good. Two red cards and a minimal 1-0 defeat was enough to send them home with their heads down. So they changed the coach and hope that they can regain their football glory again on home ground when they host the Euro 2004. The only problem is with which players..... Bojan Cešnovar