Women's Euro 2025 team guides: Portugal

The Guardian

8 hours ago

This article is part of the Guardian's Euro 2025 Experts' Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 16 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two teams each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 2 July.
Portugal want more. After featuring at the 2017 and 2022 European Championships, as well as the 2023 World Cup, the 'Navigators' think that the time has come to do more than just taking part. This time they want to do something unprecedented for the women's team: to get out of the group and Switzerland, a country with a large Portuguese community, is an ideal place to make history.
The qualifying campaign fuelled this sense of expectation. Portugal did not lose any of the 10 games they played – six in the first phase and then four more in two playoff rounds against Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic.
The recent Nations League campaign was a wake-up call though and old doubts have resurfaced: are Portugal really ready to fight against the strongest teams on the continent? After a promising start, with a draw at home against England and a win in Belgium, Francisco Neto's team endured four consecutive defeats – conceding 20 goals and scoring only three – and ended up relegated to League B.
The results also reflected the absence of some of the team's key figures: Kika Nazareth (Barcelona) sustained a serious injury in March; Lúcia Alves (Benfica) missed more than half the season and Jéssica Silva (Gotham) had an eye problem. They are all in the squad but there are question marks over how match-ready they will be.
'We are not in the cycle we want to be, where we deserve to be, and where we have worked to be,' Neto said recently. 'There is no other way to turn things around than through hard work and focus. It's worth remembering that not everything is fine just because we win and not everything is wrong when we lose. These are difficult times for us as the team have got us used to success.'
Now it is up to Neto to get the squad back on track but the first assignment couldn't be tougher: Spain in Berne on 3 July.
Francisco Neto is only 43 years old, but has been in his position for over a decade. Having started in 2014, when Portugal were 43rd in the Fifa rankings, he has overseen a rise to 22nd and historic appearances at the World Cup and two European Championships. He has played a big part in this improvement, partly through his work as national coach but also ensuring that the sport has grown as a whole, in close collaboration with the clubs.
He has had a core of players on his journey but has never been afraid to bring in younger squad members, leading to a constant evolution of the group. He will always have his legacy but the latest results indicate that we may be nearing the end of a cycle. The European Championship will tell whether Neto is still the right coach to take Portugal to new heights or whether it is time for a shake-up. 'The development of Portuguese women's football is much more than the Nations League,' he said before the tournament.
Kika Nazareth is the reference point in a new era of Portuguese women's football. This is the new, more professional, more competitive and more capable era. More captivating too. Now there are children in Portugal who are named after her – that is the impact she is having. She is not the first Portuguese female player to join a top European club – others have played for Barcelona, ​​in fact – but now the context is different, even in financial terms. Benfica received €500,000 for Nazareth, who immediately conquered Catalonia with her footballing quality but also her joy and smile. A serious injury in March threatened her place at the Euros but she made the squad and even the presence of a half-fit Nazareth will give the other players a boost. 'But wait for me: because no matter how long the road, I will return,' she wrote on social media after the injury, quoting a poem by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
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Telma Encarnação. Born in Madeira, like Cristiano Ronaldo, she is also obsessed with goals. Scored Portugal's first goal at a World Cup, against Vietnam, in 2023. It took her a while to pluck up the courage to leave her native island, but last summer she moved to Sporting and scored 12 times. She's only 23 and is still establishing herself as the main focal point for the Portuguese attack. It looks as if she will be around for some time.
The results of the national team reflect the evolution of the domestic competitions, helped along the way by a development strategy launched by the former FPF board, and supported by clubs. The number of licensed players has tripled in the last decade, and is now close to 15,000. As a result the number of teams and competitions/games has grown, and young players have conditions that their older colleagues could only have dreamed of. About 50% of the players in the top flight are professionals but it is a very different picture between the haves and the have-nots in the league. In March 2023 a new record for women's domestic football was set with 27,000 watching the Benfica v Sporting game. That was beaten last season as Porto, who had only formed their women's team at the start of the campaign, attracted 31,000 fans to their first game. Also at Dragão, the national team had the support of 40,000 supporters against Czech Republic in the qualifying playoff for the Euros.
To get past the group stage for the first time at a major tournament.
The Portugal team guide was written by Nuno Travassos for A Bola.