The World Cup qualifying playoffs will continue on Tuesday and there are a number of good matches on the schedule, as Portugal and Sweden will be matching up in the crucial second leg and the game will be starting up at 8:45 p.m. local time and 2:45 p.m. ET at Friends Arena in Stockholm and the game will be on TV from ESPN2, ESPN Deportes as well as Sky Sports in England.
The game will be streaming online from Sky Go in the UK and the Watch ESPN website in the United States and puts together two of the best players in the world in Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and should be a great match. Portugal is up 1-0 in scoring with a goal from Ronaldo in the last matchup and now this game will decide who advances to play in the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and that means one of the top players in the world will be left home. The Portugal team needs to just hold tight and keep their lead on the road and now the two teams know that one will be left holding the bag as the other heads to Brazil.
Portugal leads the tie thanks to a goal from Ronaldo, who bravely dived in among flying boots to notch a late winner in Lisbon.
Sweden captain Zlatan was largely anonymous in the first leg but Bento again downplayed the role of the two marquee players, saying that the match was a clash between two national teams with great mutual respect. If Sweden succeed in shackling Cristiano Ronaldo other players will step up and score, Portugal coach Paolo Bento said on the eve of the second leg of their World Cup playoff.
Bento is confident his team, leading 1-0 from the first leg, can conjure goals from sources other than their prolific captain.
"I think it will be a similar situation to our own, when we try to stop the organization of Sweden and us having in mind of course trying to stop (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic," he told a news conference on Monday.
"There is no way to stop a single player, we have to do it collectively. I think Swede will also try to stop Ronaldo as a team, but what we will try to do is attack well, not only counting on Ronaldo of course.
"If there is a special marking on Ronaldo that may give us an opportunity to score from other players and zones on the pitch." "We respect the Swedish national team a lot, they've got an excellent group of players and of course they've got Ibrahimovic, everybody knows his quality.
"But we will try to do as we did in the first game and try to control Sweden as a whole, and not only a single player."
Bento said that his side would be going for victory at the sold-out Friends Arena in Stockholm as they attempt to book their place at the World Cup finals in Brazil.
"We have to wait and see what Sweden will do, (but) we will try to win," he said. "Our strategy tomorrow is to go out and win the match and we will have to attack as well as we can to achieve that goal." (Reuters)
