Oh man. What a day. After watching Switzerland play against the Czech Republic, I thought that these first games might be incredibly uneventful.

But as I sat down to watch Portugal, I began to realize that there was something different about this game.

And boy was it exciting. Pepe scored a goal in the first half that was taken back because he was offside. This kept the score at 0-0 going into the second half, so I was concerned about whether Portugal would be able to pull ahead.

Fortunately, Pepe (a defender) decided that he wouldn’t let his first international goal be taken away so easily. So, in the 61st minute, he found himself in Turkey’s end again and scored the first goal of the game, moving the score to 1-0.

Turkey fought back pretty consistently over the next 20 minutes, and I was genuinely worried twice because of how well they managed to get through Portugal’s defense. Fortunately, nothing ever came of it.

And then, as they are given an additional 3 minutes past the 90 minute mark, another fantastic play happens. Ronaldo was coming up the left side of the field with the ball. A defender is right in front of him. So he passes the ball to Moutinho, who I thought had a good chance of scoring since the Turkish keeper had rushed out of his net. Unfortunately, Moutinho started to spin around and was facing away from the net (to guard from a Turkish defender) all while the Turkish keeper was diving in mid air towards him, so I knew he didn’t have a hope in hell of scoring.

But then, out of the blue, Raul Meireles (who had only been on the field for about 7 minutes following his substitution with Simao) runs up the right side of the field, gets a sideways pass from Moutinho, and kicks it into the net for Portugal’s second goal. I was completely amazed. As soon as Moutinho started to spin, I thought to myself, “Goddamnit. There goes the second goal.” And then Meireles completely changed that around. Excellent game. Excellent.

I’m just disappointed that I have to miss their game on Wednesday because it overlaps with my Linear Algebra lecture. I need to find some place that is streaming it online so I can watch in class.