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Portugal Books Ticket to Euros, Prepares to Bring Greasy Back

Two (goals) for you, Cristiano coco.

And here I was beginning to think we'd never get our passport. To quote a sage man, the parties were not easy. Portugal was, to put it mildly, a wreck after Queiroz ran us into the ground at the World Cup with his patented 10 Defenders And Cristiano™ defense, and his delayed departure meant two Euro qualifiers without a permanent coach. How did that go for us? Well… We managed to concede 4 goals in the first, and lose the second. We had 1 out of 6 possible points in our first two games and tomorrow's horoscope wasn't looking so bright and sunny.

Then, a miracle happened! We hired a coach who… Didn't think Cristiano was a striker? Who actually played a center forward as a center forward? Who was competent enough to google "creative midfield?" It turned out all we needed all along was a Football Manager veteran, beginning the question of whether we would have made it past the Round of 16 if we'd hired a 25 year-old gamer who grasped the concept of not putting Cristiano on one end of the field and the rest of the team on the other.

But I digress: we got our act together, and by 2010's end, we managed to bring ourselves level with Denmark and Norway with 10 points. We were back in the game! The Euros were a glimmer in our eye again!

Then we lost to Denmark. Suddenly, it was jeopardy all over again, and our failure to overcome the conditions in Bosnia and finish our attacks put us in a very precarious situation – a 0-0 draw. With no away goals to cling to, the situation coming back to Lisbon was simple. Win or go home.

With a thousand glittering lights and a sea of breathless fans, the Estádio da Luz lived up to its name, but it remained to be seen whether we would live up to it. We watched, we waited, we prayed (to every deity in the sky, spaghetti monsters included - just to be safe.) We could do this, couldn't we? It wouldn't be the first time we overcame heartbreak and hardship, but yesterday's slip-ups have a way of crafting an uncertain tomorrow. National anthem sung, we could only wait, cheer, and believe. It was up to the eleven men on the pitch now.

And then, like candle in the dark – or a remote-activated car in a really crowded parking garage – it happened:

The valiant, unrelenting, unjustly-maligned Captain told everyone where to put it with a single (free) flick. "Relief" didn't begin to express the emotion that swept over the crowd, magnifying the glimmer of hope. Was this real? Could this really be ours?

Yes. Call it scintillating, call it exhilarating – call it a golazo, if you like. However you classify it, it was a hell of a strike, from a player who'd been deceptively quiet the last few games. Silent no more, Nani stunned goalkeeper and crowd alike, and it looked like we might be on our way to Euros.

Or, uh, maybe not. Suddenly, the spectre of Wolfgang Stark's School of Penalties™ reared its head when we were denied a clear trip in the box, but Bosnia was awarded a penalty when Coentrao got a little handy (and not in the way that

winkiss would appreciate). Suddenly, it was 2-1, and that sigh of relief left our lungs feeling starved. Was this going to be another case of death by high hopes?

Not if Cristiano had anything to say about it. Just like that, he delivered, and in doing so, tied his idol Figo as the 3rd highest all-time scorer of the Portugal NT, behind only Pauleta and Eusebio. We were up two again, and in a normal world, where referees weren't named Wolfgang Stark, that might have been that. It wasn't, of course; Bosnia received a peculiar red card, Stark failed to award a penalty for a Bosnian handball identical to the one he penalized Portugal for earlier, and Bosnia scored an offside goal that, somehow, was considered legal. At 3-2, we were beginning to get a sense of deja vu with this pattern of taking two steps forward and being arbitrarily beaten one step back.

But the bullshit was no match for our perseverance. Postiga made it 4-2, before Veloso capitalized on the entire stadium's (including the goalkeeper's) expectation that Cristiano would be taking the free kick. Postiga threw in a brace for the hell of it, lest he lose his "Postigol" nickname, and with six goals and a rollercoaster of a game under our belt, we were on our way to Euros.

Granted, we have a worrying shortage of backup defenders and a coach who doesn't seem to comprehend why this is problematic, but we've got a year to work on that. Hey, you can't walk before you learn to crawl.