Portugal beat Slovenia live updates (2024)

Portugal beat Slovenia in a dramatic penalty shootout to book a Euro 2024 quarter-final against France, after Cristiano Ronaldo’s spot-kick was saved in extra time.

Ronaldo was reduced to tears when the Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak saved his penalty in extra time, with the score 0-0. Benjamin Sesko then missed a glorious chance moments later with the game going to penalties.

Ronaldo recovered to score Portugal’s first and Diogo Costa saved all three of the spot-kicks he faced, with Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva scoring the winning penalty to send his nation through.

They will face France in the next round, a repeat of the 2016 final.

After a two-month run that brought goals in seven straight Bundesliga games, interest from five of England’s biggest teams followed by a new contract and a hefty raise from your current club, it was always going to be hard for Benjamin Sesko to enhance his reputation at Euro 2024.

Because at the moment, the 21-year-old Slovenian is football’s equivalent of the next big tech stock, a unicorn, all upside, you better jump on board before this train leaves the station and so on.

And all of that might still come to pass….

But what we have seen over the four games at this tournament is the reason why none of his many admirers have hit RB Leipzig’s magic number yet and he will be returning for another year of Red Bull finishing school next term.

More a case of reputation confirmed than enhanced.

Portugal ought to be so much better than this.

Fair enough, the underwhelming misuse of talent is a category you could file France and England under too. And like those two, they are into the quarter-finals.

But Martinez’s preference to still build the team around Ronaldo is, tactically, not holding water.

They scrapped a late victory from the jaws of defeat on matchday one against the Czech Republic. A win is a win at a tournament. But that does not stop it being tactically unconvincing.

The fact that statement, from game one, holds true at game four is a problem.

Cristiano Ronaldo has admitted Euro 2024 will be his last European Championship.

The Portugal star — a champion in 2016 — is the all-time record scorer in the competition’s history with 14 goals.

He is yet to score in this summer’s tournament but remains in with a chance of a fairytale sign-off and another title after Portugal survived a penalty shootout against Slovenia in the last 16 to advance to the quarter-finals.

Ronaldo told Portuguese newspaper O Jogo after the game:

💬 “It is, without doubt, my last European Championship,” “But I’m not emotional about that. I’m moved by all that football means — by the enthusiasm I have for the game, the enthusiasm for seeing my supporters, my family, the affection people have for me.”

Matjaz Kek has built this Slovenia team on its defence.

“We must be able to suffer defensively,” he said before a 2-0 friendly win over Portugal in March.

Just over three months later, Slovenia were vindicating his words against Portugal once more.

Portugal had only failed to score in regulation time in three games since the 2022 World Cup — and two of those were against Slovenia.

Portugal goalkeeper Diogo Costa spent most of the match watching a defensive masterclass from his opposite number Jan Oblak and Slovenia’s back four, only to save the first three penalties he faced in the shootout.

It was an incredibly cruel end to what had been a magnificent performance by the underdogs, but Costa refused to let this game be the first big upset of the knockout rounds.

The 24-year-old Porto star dived to his left to thwart Josip Ilicic, then to his right to stop penalties from Jure Balkovec and Benjamin Verbic. All three were well struck but they were at the proverbial nice height.

In between these saves, Portugal’s misfiring attackers finally found their sights.

The sight of Ronaldo sobbing uncontrollably as he tried to comprehend his penalty miss in extra time may become one of the defining images not just of Euro 2024, but any European Championship.

His team-mates tried to console and refocus their captain — Diogo Dalot comforted and kissed him, Joao Palhinha gave a stern word and Bruno Fernandes offered some quiet advice in his ear.

But to see the man venerated as the greatest Portuguese, and possibly European, player of all time reduced to floods of tears was pretty astonishing.

So Portugal have scraped through to the European Championship quarter-finals after beating Slovenia in a penalty shootout, in a match that saw Cristiano Ronaldo reduced to tears.

Matt Slater, Tim Spiers and Liam Tharme break down a dramatic last-16 match in Frankfurt. Read it in full with the link below.

It felt like Slovenia worked so hard to get to the shootout, and they did. They also had some incredible chances to win it. But Portugal should have got there first too. Here’s how the numbers looked after 120 minutes…

FT (aet): Portugal 0-0 (3-0 pens) Slovenia

• Possession: 72% — 28%
• Shots: 20 — 10
• On target: 6 — 2
• XG: 1.87 — 0.50
• Big chances: 1 — 1
• Blocked shots: 6 — 2
• Duels won: 85 — 72
• Dispossessed: 18 — 13

Slovenia can leave with their heads up. As for Portugal, I wouldn’t want to predict a winner between them and France. We could get anything.

You can imagine the Slovenia reaction and much of it follows the same lines as this, from midfielder Adam Gnezda Cerin, speaking to UEFA:

💬 “I think we will be back at a major tournament before long and we will be able to live such moments again.

“Portugal were perhaps a bit more focused at the shootout, but nevermind. We’ve done a good job, not only for ourselves but for all of Slovenian sport.

“This team is something special and we’ll be back.”

Yes, there was a record for him in the end tonight. Aged 39 years and 147 days, Cristiano Ronaldo has become the oldest player to score a penalty in a European Championship shoot-out.

Quite the run of age-related records that Portugal players are setting at Euro 2024.

A penny for the thoughts of Cristiano Ronaldo then? No need. Here’s what he said immediately after the game:

💬 “At first I was sad. Now I am overjoyed. This is football. This is what football gives you.

“You cannot explain this. It goes from eight to 80. We had the chance to go ahead. I failed. Oblak defended it. I need to see it again. I don’t know if I hit it right or not.

“I feel sad but happy as well. It’s important to enjoy progressing. We’re doing a great job, we’re here to the bitter end.

"We had more chances and we deserved this.”

Today’s events will have the name of Diogo Costa written through them for a long time to come — and maybe into legend if Portugal go on to win the tournament in a fortnight’s time.

Here is UEFA’s official player of the match, reacting to that shootout win:

💬 “This is probably the best game of my life. I focused on doing what I had to do. I went with my gut feeling. Of course we had analysed the penalty takers, but players change and they change how they shoot.

“When I made the save from Sesko in extra-time, I felt I had to do it. I read his body language, and was able to help the team.

“We all felt we needed to keep believing (after Ronaldo’s first penalty was saved). We believed until the very end.

“I am very happy and very excited to have helped the team.”

During the first half of normal time, the Portugal players were attempting to set up Cristiano Ronaldo with such frequency one might have thought this was his testimonial.

In extra time, the Manchester United and Real Madrid great had the chance to score in his sixth successive Euros but was denied by a magnificent penalty save from another legend of the game, Jan Oblak.

Ronaldo sobbed during the half-time break of extra-time but it feels as though there is no situation in which he would be substituted, despite the fact that there were times tonight when he felt more hindrance than help.

Ultimately, he buried his penalty in the shootout but perhaps it wouldn’t have gone that far had he been replaced earlier.

What a night for Cristiano Ronaldo, although I’m not about to dissect how good or bad it was in 25 words.

But there was this. He has now attempted 20 shots at Euro 2024 and still hasn’t scored (the shootout doesn’t count, of course).

Only four players have taken more shots without scoring at a single European Championship since 1980. Here’s the list:

• 24 — Deco (Euro 2004)
• 23 — Hierro (Euro 1996)
• 21 — De Bruyne (Euro 2016), Olmo (Euro 2020)
• 20 — Ronaldo (Euro 2024)

Slovenia spent the bulk of the match soaking up pressure before hitting Portugal on the break and getting in behind the defenders on the hour. Just as it looked like Benjamin Sesko had beaten Pepe for pace and was about to give his side the unlikeliest of leads, the veteran defender was wily enough to use his guile and physicality to put the forward off and ensure there was no harm done.

Much of the focus has, understandably, been on Ronaldo but the 41-year-old defender is one of the game’s greats and still has plenty to offer at the stage of his career.

Tonight and at 41 years 126 days, Pepe became the oldest player to appear in a knockout stage match in a major tournament, including the Euros and World Cup.

He has surpassed the record previously set by Peter Shilton at the 1990 World Cup, in England’s third-place playoff with Italy when he was 40 years 292 days old.

And now he should get another go against France in the quarter-finals of Euro 2024.

To reiterate that point on Porto and Portugal goalkeeper Diogo Costa, he has become the first in European Championship history to NOT concede a single goal in a penalty shootout.

Remarkable. In fact, Costa made more saves in the penalty shootout (3) than he did in the 120 minutes before (2).

And with that, he has booked Portugal a quarter-final against France.

That should be fun too.

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The mental and physical effort exhibited by Slovenia was astonishing in their historic first knockout game. They knew Portugal had better players all over the pitch and had to make themselves hard to beat, just as they did against England.

They came with a plan to frustrate and it worked perfectly until the penalty shootout, much to the chagrin of the Portuguese players and supporters.

Portugal lacked imagination and Roberto Martinez didn’t seem to have the ability to come up with a way of changing things. They will need to be so much better if they want to emulate the heroics of 2016 but the Slovenians should be immensely proud of what they brought to Euro 2024.