Martinez pleased with Portugal win, praises Diogo Costa | OneFootball

Portugal qualified for the next round of the 2026 World Cup by beating Croatia 2-1, and Roberto Martínez ended the match with a very clear message: to win, the team needed quality, game intelligence and, above all, a response in the toughest moments. The coach highlighted the team’s first half, praised the depth of the bench and pointed to Diogo Costa as one of the standout figures of the night. In the end, he summed up the essentials and assured: “He is ready.”

In the aftermath of a knockout match, with none of the margin for error typical of the group stage, Roberto Martínez said he was pleased with the way Portugal handled a game of maximum difficulty. The coach spoke of competitive maturity, the ability to suffer without losing conviction, and the variety of profiles that allows him to change the game without disrupting the team. It was a pure World Cup reading, in which perfection gives way to the ability to survive with clarity.

In his overall analysis of the match, Martínez was clear and immediately framed the difference between this stage of the competition and what had come before. His assessment began with the quality of the first half, but took on another dimension when the game forced Portugal to resist and keep believing.

“These are no longer group-stage games, they are games where if you play well you need to score. The first half was fantastic in every way: the ability to read the game, getting into the final third…,” he said. “There is always danger against a team like Croatia, where you need team values, to concede a goal and keep believing. That mentality helps you win a game. The perfect game at a World Cup no longer exists. It is about the ability to be good, to have talent...”

In the coach’s words, there is a less romantic and harsher view of the competition: it is not enough to play well, you have to turn superiority into efficiency and keep your head when the script gets complicated. It was that mental resilience, more than any ideal of absolute control, that Martínez found in Portugal’s performance.

When the conversation turned to the bench and the solutions available, the tone changed: that of a team built with variety and resources to respond to different scenarios. Martínez highlighted names and characteristics, always with the understanding that the collective thrives on that diversity.

“That’s what we have, many different profiles, players with experience. There is no one else at the World Cup who can take a penalty the way Ronaldo did and another who attacks the box like Gonçalo Ramos,” he stressed. “And then Semedo, Chico… and we had more to help. The team is committed. João Félix is having a very good World Cup. We have players who need to be ready, Portugal’s strength is that, being together.”

The coach also stressed that this individual wealth only makes sense when it translates into collective commitment.

From this perspective, Portugal appears less as a team dependent on one figure and more as an organism with alternatives, capable of changing its skin over the course of the game. The message is clear: the value lies as much in those who decide things as in those who come on to change the course of the match.

Asked whether this might have been the national team’s best performance, Martínez preferred to frame the answer within the inherent toughness of the competition. And, without hiding his pride, he firmly defended Portugal’s technical and tactical superiority, even if the match had its scares.

“We are at the World Cup, the games are very competitive. Technically and tactically we were superior to Croatia, we only lacked the goal. We had an intensity we had not had before, it was the first at this level of intensity,” he explained. “There is confusion over a throw-in that we think is ours and in that move we concede a goal. It is easy for that to give Croatia strength, the momentum was going the other way. We had heart and the ability to use different profiles and adjust what we needed. It is a day to be very proud of our players. The game was fantastic for the fans. We reached the round of 16, in a year when we honor Diogo Jota and André, and also Ricardo Carvalho’s father. It ended 2-1, which is Diogo Jota’s 21, against the last team he scored against. There are many signs of the strength and energy of what Diogo Jota was in the national team, a focus on believing, that we have a responsibility to continue showing those values. He is our light at the World Cup.”

More than an aesthetic assessment of the performance, the coach painted an emotional portrait of the night, in which intensity, adaptability and the symbolic weight of the result all came together. Martínez’s pride does not come from a perfect match, but from a team that managed to stay on course when the game threatened to slip away.

Finally, the conversation focused on the decisive moments: the saves by Diogo Costa, the impact of Gonçalo Ramos and the change in midfield after Ronaldo went off. It was there that Martínez explained most clearly the logic behind the substitutions and his fine reading of the game’s key moments.

“It is important to use the profiles we have in the team. Bringing on Gonçalo Ramos with Cris in the box could cause a lot of problems, it was the right moment. After the goal, Croatia needed to come out more and take risks, so it was the moment to have one more midfielder and control the Modric-Kovacic link,” he analyzed. “The game needed that at that moment. When they started getting back to our goal, it was time for a different structure. Diogo Costa already showed us against Colombia that he is ready, he is the captain of his club, and he has grown a lot in maturity. We are very happy to have a goalkeeper like Diogo Costa.”

In this final view, the coach’s approach becomes clear: adapt, make changes, protect critical areas and trust those who have to decide when the pressure rises. And while the collective plan was, for Martínez, one of the keys to victory, the assurance of Diogo Costa emerged as confirmation that Portugal has a goalkeeper for this stage.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.