This Week on Betfair Live Video: Portugal v China

Live Video / Editor / 01 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

Cristiano Ronaldo, Simao Sabrosa and Raul Meireles will all be key players for Portugal in South Africa this summer

On Wednesday night Portugal should beat China comfortably on home soil but there's a good reason why this fixture is taking place and good reasons why you should tune in to Betfair Live Video to watch it.

At times Portugal appeared to do their very best to not qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the epitome of which was allowing a 2-1 lead at home to Denmark at the start of injury-time become a 2-3 defeat. Under former Real Madrid boss Carlos Queiroz, for much of the campaign they seemed incapable of keeping clean sheets and despite boasting such attacking talents as Cristiano Ronaldo, Simao Sabrosa and Deco, they couldn't score goals. In the end they relied on Denmark doing them a massive favour by beating Sweden to reach the play-offs, where they finally showed glimpses of their class in clinically dispatching Bosnia over two legs to book their place in South Africa. They may have made a meal of getting to the World Cup, but now they're there, they mean business.

A friendly on home soil to China, who won't be in South Africa, may not seem like the toughest test in preparation for the summer's finals but there's a good reason for this fixture taking place. Portugal will face North Korea in the group stages of the World Cup who play a similar brand of football to China with an emphasis on getting plenty of men behind the ball and using pacy wingers to try and catch teams on the break. This fixture was arranged with that tie against North Korea very much in mind.

It's a match Portugal will expect to win and win comfortably but aside from the result it will be one of Queiroz's last chances to figure out just what his best formation is and perhaps more significantly, work out where the team's talisman Ronaldo is best employed within it. The result on the night is obviously important but the level of the performance will be more so and will give punters a clue as to just how serious Portugal's credentials are ahead of this summer's extravaganza.

For full details of all the live sport available on Betfair this week, click here