The Portugal midfielder Bruno Fernandes commented on the success against Croatia: “Croatia is a team that has a lot of mobility and creates a lot of difficulties for us in pressing, because they also have a lot of width, because they have very mobile players, who end up not giving us great references and also end up opening up our midfield. But I think we were very responsible in the first half. In the second half we let the game be theirs and they dominated the ball possession too much. I think that in the first 15, 20 minutes we did well, but then we let the game be theirs. But in the end what matters is the victory and we are very happy about that.
Dalot’s goal? We know the positions we have to occupy, the spaces that were behind their defense. At the moment I received the ball, we were also attacking the space, which was one of the things we had worked on, Cristiano falling, dragging players and then making others go to defense and in the end I left the ball to Diogo and he scored.
Cristiano’s 900th goal? I thought we had already stopped counting. At least we have stopped counting, not him. He likes to count them and I think it is a very special number for him and we are all very happy for him too, because he is not just Cristiano. In addition to being Cristiano, he raises the name of our nation to the highest levels as he has done in all these years and this is another record, another normality in his life”.