Croatia vs Portugal Prediction, Betting Tips & Preview

Preview

Joel Amorim Jun 23, 2016 @ 01:00 am

Next Saturday, 25th of June 2016, clockwork Croatia will measure forces with an extremely inconsistent Portugal at Stade Bollaert-Delelis in Lens for the Euro 2016 Round of 16.

Without Luka Modric, who still recovering from a recent injury, Croatia pulled off a spectacular win over Spain last time out. The match, nevertheless, didn’t start well for Ante Cacic’s men, but they should great class and determination to not only reach the equalizer, but also to claw a splendid win thanks to a late goal by Ivan Perisic.

Before the match, Vicente Del Bosque praised Croatia, claiming that they were one of the best teams at the Euros and he was right to think like that. The Balkanic team had inflicted to Spain an enormous tactical lesson and showed that it possible to overcome the current European champions without parking the bus back in defence.

The upcoming fixture against Portugal will certainly be very different, given the nature of the match itself, but from what one was able to witness recently, Croatia are slight favourites out there. The last time both sides met at a major European tournament was in 1996 and, back then, the Portuguese team pulled off an impressive 3-0 win over a Croatia with Davor Suker, Zvonimir Boban and Robert Prosinecki in their ranks.

As for Portugal, they are yet to win a match at the European Championship after their spectacular 3-3 draw against Hungary last time out. Portugal struggled to deal with an extremely well organized side such as Hungary and were forced to come from behind three times in order to take something positive from the match. After an exasperating performance against Austria last weekend, Cristiano Ronaldo has finally written his name at the scoresheet, netting two of Portugal’s goal against the Magyar team.

The Portuguese team is yet to pull off a decent performance at the Euros so far and not even the fact of having scored three goals against Hungary helped them grab a place in the top two places of their group. In fact, Portugal might consider themselves lucky to have walked through to the next stage of the tournament with just three points, but their head coach Fernando Santos will definitely need to pull rank, if he wants his team to take something positive from the match against Croatia.

Croatia

Stats: W-4 L-0 D-1

Recent Form - WDWWW

Portugal

Stats: W-1 L-1 D-3

Recent Form - DDDWL

Possible Line-ups

Croatia (4-2-3-1) – Subasic - Srna - Corluka - Vida - Strinic - Modric - Badelj - Rakitic - Brozovic - Perisic - Kalinic

Portugal (4-4-2 – Rui Patricio - Vieirinha - Pepe - Ricardo Carvalho - Eliseu - William - Moutinho - André Gomes - João Mário - Nani - Ronaldo

Injury List / Suspended Players

Croatia - None

Portugal - Raphael Guerreiro (in doubt)

Head-to-head matches:

League Positions