World Cup<\/a> as group toppers, with Bruno Fernandes and Joao Neves leading the charge with a hat-trick each.<\/p>\nPortugal, the reigning Nations League champions, were forced to wait to book an automatic spot when they lost 2-0 to Ireland on Thursday in a game where their captain Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off.<\/p>\n
But Portugal did not need their all-time top scorer in a one-sided match as Roberto Martinez\u2019s side topped the group with 13 points, giving Ronaldo the opportunity to play at a record sixth World Cup.<\/p>\n
Defender Renato Veiga opened the scoring for Portugal with a close-range header in the seventh minute but they were stunned when Eduard Spertsyan converted a cross from Grant-Leon Ranos 11 minutes later.<\/p>\n
It was only Armenia\u2019s third goal in the qualifying group having failed to score in their previous three games.<\/p>\n
However, Goncalo Ramos restored Portugal\u2019s lead while Neves added two goals before halftime, including a superb free-kick into the top corner. Fernandes then converted a penalty in first-half added time to make it 5\u20131 at the break.<\/p>\n
The second half continued in the same pattern as Fernandes struck again soon after the restart. A flurry of substitutions followed but Portugal\u2019s pressure never relented and when they earned another penalty, Fernandes completed his hat-trick.<\/p>\n
Neves then added his third goal of the night with a composed finish after Portugal hit the post while, at the other end, Diogo Costa and the Portuguese defence comfortably kept Armenia at bay.<\/p>\n
Francisco Conceicao then added the icing on the cake with a long-range strike in added time as Portugal completed the rout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup Group F qualifier: Portugal 9 [Veiga 7; Ramos 28; Neves 30, 41, 81; Fernandes 45+3 pen,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7815,42,43,40,38,41,39,4018],"class_list":{"0":"post-143369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-bruno-fernandes","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}