Portugal secured qualification for the 2026 World Cup in style as Bruno Fernandes and Joao Neves both scored hat-tricks in a\u00a09-1 rout of Armenia in Porto.<\/p>\n
Cristiano Ronaldo was suspended following his red card in Thursday’s 2-0 defeat to the Republic of Ireland, a result that made the Selecao wait to clinch top spot in Group F.<\/p>\n
But Roberto Martinez’s team coped well without their talisman on Sunday, hitting five goals before half-time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Renato Veiga nodded in the opener after Fernandes saw a curling free-kick parried onto the post by Henri Avagyan, though Armenia briefly got back on level terms when captain Eduard Spertsyan bundled home following good work from Grant-Leon Ranos.<\/p>\n
However, Portugal shook off that setback as Goncalo Ramos intercepted Artur Serobyan’s loose back pass to make it 2-1, before Neves struck with a low drive and an inch-perfect free-kick off the underside of the crossbar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sergey Muradyan’s foul on Ruben Dias allowed Fernandes to make it five from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time, and the Manchester United man curled home a sixth in the 51st minute.<\/p>\n
Another penalty conceded by Muradyan \u2013 this time for a foul on substitute Carlos Forbs \u2013 allowed Fernandes to get his hat-trick, before Neves followed suit with a close-range finish after Nelson Semedo kept Fernandes’ cross alive.<\/p>\n
Fernandes and Ramos passed up a big chance apiece late on, but Portugal did get a ninth goal in stoppage time as substitute Francisco Conceicao drilled home left-footed.<\/p>\n
The result, coupled with Hungary’s 3-2 defeat to\u00a0the Republic of Ireland in Budapest, means Portugal top Group F by three points to qualify for a seventh straight World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Data Debrief: Firsts for Fernandes and Neves<\/p>\n
Fernandes had scored 25 senior international goals coming into Sunday’s game, but he had never hit a hat-trick for his country.<\/p>\n
His first treble in the Selecao’s colours was accompanied by one for Neves, who had never even scored for Portugal before this game.<\/p>\n
Though Portugal were briefly stunned by Spertsyan’s goal, they were utterly dominant in terms of shots (34 to four), shots on target (15 to two) and expected goals (5.21 xG to 0.75).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portugal secured qualification for the 2026 World Cup in style as Bruno Fernandes and Joao Neves both scored…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-295537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}