Injured goalkeeper Anthony Lopes (Lyon) will miss Portugal’s 2022 World Cup play-off matches, adding himself to the team’s casualty list before hosting Turkey on Thursday in Porto, the Portuguese Football Federation announced. (FPF).
Lopes was “deemed unfit” and then replaced by Wolverhampton goalkeeper José Sa, the FPF said in a statement, without giving further details.
This is the third last-minute loss within the Seleçao, after veteran defender Pepe (positive for covid-19) and Ruben Neves, injured this weekend with Wolverhampton.
“We must not give too much importance to those who are not (…) We have confidence in all those who have been called up to replace them,” Liverpool attacker Diogo Jota said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Pepe attended the meeting on Monday near Lisbon, but was left in isolation for an unknown amount of time. Lille central defender Tiago Djalo was called up as a reinforcement, when he was initially scheduled to join the U21 squad.
Vitinha, who is shining this season with Porto, was called up on Monday after Ruben Neves was dropped.
Added to these last-minute setbacks are other casualties that Fernando Santos already had to face when making his list, such as those of Ruben Dias (Manchester City), Nelson Semedo (Wolverhampton) or Renato Sanches (Lille).
If Cristiano Ronaldo and his teammates from Portugal beat Turkey in the semi-final of their play-off, they would face, again in Porto, Italy or North Macedonia in the final, with a ticket to Qatar-2022 at stake.
Since Euro-2000, Portugal has attended all the major international events. The last one that was lost was the World Cup in France-1998.
