One of those games that just gets the mouth watering, the prospect of this evening’s game between the Czechs and the Portuguese brings to mind impressive shooting, fast passing and fancy footwork from both teams.

In Portugal’s 2-0 victory over Turkey, centre-back Pepe proved his worth – and also why Real Madrid shelled out the big money to prise him away from Porto – by knocking one in for his national side. Not only did he make the scoreline uneven, he covered more than his share of ground in defence, made a team-high 41 passes and cleared the ball nine times. Impressive stuff, and it goes to underline his position as one of Europe’s leading defenders.

He may be old (well, relatively at 30), but he sure ain’t slow. Ricardo Carvalho proved on Saturday against the Turks that he is no slouch, and could show Mr. Ronaldo a thing or two about covering the ground swiftly. Notching up an impressive 28.57 km/h top speed, Carvalho outpaced his younger – and quite frankly more nimble-footed team mate – but only just. We’re not saying he’d win a 100m race, but over a short distance he might defeat the mighty Cristiano. Let’s see if he can run rings round the Czech attack tonight.

Jack thinks this one might be a 2-0 Portugal triumph.

Tom is going for a close-fought 2-1 Portuguese victory.

The stats were provided by http://www.castrolindex.com