Portugal are being talked about as genuine World Cup contenders because their midfield now looks good enough to carry them through the hardest parts of a tournament. At the center of that case is Vitinha, who finished third in the most recent Ballon d’Or rankings and was named player of the match in the Champions League final.
That matters now because Portugal are set to play in their ninth World Cup and their seventh in a row, and the debate around them has shifted from whether they belong among the contenders to whether their control in the middle of the pitch can decide games against the best. Roberto Martínez has had this team since 2023, but the form of Vitinha and Bruno Fernandes has done most of the talking.
Fernandes arrives with the sort of numbers that explain why Portugal’s attack can be fed from almost anywhere. He scored nine goals and made 21 assists in his most productive Premier League campaign for Manchester United, led the league with 136 chances created and broke the Premier League record for assists in a single season, passing Thierry Henry and Kevin de Bruyne, who had 20. For Portugal, he created 21 chances in qualifying, scored a hat-trick and made eight chances in the 9-1 win over Armenia, then added two assists in the 2-0 win over the US and the winner in the 2-1 win against Chile.
Vitinha’s case is different, but just as forceful. He supplied 11 assists in all competitions this season for Paris Saint-Germain, with only Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembélé managing more for the club. In the Champions League final against Arsenal, he was everywhere at once: 141 passes completed, 75 of them in the opposition half and 162 touches in total. Across the season, he completed 5,234 passes and 3,001 in the opposition’s half, more than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues in both categories.
The friction is obvious. Portugal are being treated like a side built for a deep run, but they have never reached a World Cup final and their best finish remains third place in 1966, when they reached the semi-finals and beat the Soviet Union. They won Euro 2016, yet the World Cup has been less forgiving, ending in the group stage in 2014 and in the last 16 in 2018. Cristiano Ronaldo is now at his sixth World Cup, but the burden of making this squad feel historic sits as much on Vitinha and Fernandes as on the 41-year-old forward.
The numbers from Opta point to a real chance, not a fantasy: Portugal are given a 7.1% chance of winning the tournament. That is not a favorite’s number, but it is large enough to justify the attention, and large enough to make the midfield look like the place where the campaign will be won or lost. If Portugal go further than they have ever gone before, it will be because Vitinha keeps the ball moving and Fernandes keeps the chances coming.
