Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal got a late win over Czechia (Photo: Getty)
Diogo Dalot says the ‘energetic’ performance of Cristiano Ronaldo was vital to Portugal beating Czechia in their Euro 2024 opener on Tuesday.
His comments come after questions were raised over whether the legendary forward would be a help or hinderence to his national team.
Portugal came from behind to win 2-1 in Leipzig, with Francisco Conceicao scoring the winner in the 92nd minute, just 111 seconds after coming off the bench.
Ronaldo lead the line as expected and had several great opportunities to score throughout the match but just couldn’t convert any of them, while an assist for what could have been a late winner for Diogo Jota was ruled out for an offside against him.
While it was still a decent performance it was far from perfect, with Stuart Pearce claiming that Portugal’s creative players became reluctant to pass to Ronaldo as the game wore on.
But Dalot, who also played alongside the 39-year-old at Manchester United for 18 months, was keen to stress how important the Al-Nassr forward is to the way Portugal play.
‘Cristiano Ronaldo was very focused, very physically fit and always ready to score goals,’ the full-back told reporters post-match.
‘I know everybody will always expect him to score goals. Sometimes he scores, a lot of times he scores! Today he was very close.
‘Obviously, you can see in the game that he played how much he ran today. He helped us with and without the ball he was always moving, energetic and that’s the Cristiano that we want.’
While hardly a perfect game for Portugal, it’s the result that matters, though they can probably expect a tougher test when they take on Turkey on Saturday after they impressively beat Georgia in the other game in Group F.
Diogo Dalot played the first 63 minutes in Leipzig (Photo: Getty)
‘We were hasty at times, especially in the first half, in our desire to enter and in our desire to find spaces, but we improved in the second half,’ Dalot added.
‘I am very happy with the win. We reacted. We lost well and rarely had counterattacks.
‘We showed it until the end. We thought we would be able to turn the match around. We know that the first match in a competition like this is always difficult against a very complex team with many confrontations.
‘I think we controlled the match, but we looked for victory, and this is what we must learn from this match and try improve some aspects.’
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