Roberto Martinez says Portugal are heading into the unknown at the World Cup, with the manager warning that the expanded 48-team tournament will test players in ways qualifying never can. He said the scale of the competition, the longer schedule and the shift across three countries mean a squad cannot rely on reputation or rhythm built at home.
“We’re talking about going into the unknown,” Martinez said, adding that “forty-eight teams means a longer period. You need to have incredible resilience. You don’t prepare for iconic moments — you prepare the team to perform under any circumstances.”
Portugal arrive with belief after a flawless qualifying campaign and a Nations League title, but Martinez was blunt about what that actually buys. “Anything we’ve done until now just gives you three games in a World Cup. It doesn’t give you anything,” he said. “You arrive at the World Cup, you’ve got three games in a group phase, and everything starts there and then.”
The remarks fit the reality of a tournament that will stretch across three countries and place fresh demands on every team. Martinez said he saw some of those demands up close last year when he observed the Club World Cup in the United States as part of Fifa’s technical study group. He pointed to the strain of different time zones, heat, humidity and storms, saying the conditions create “moments of uncertainty” and alter how the game is played compared with Europe.
He also noted that not every team approached that competition the same way. Some preferred to stay at one familiar base camp, while others moved closer to their match cities. The contrast, he said, underlined how much more complicated tournament preparation has become when travel, climate and recovery all sit inside the same problem.
Martinez has been here before. He led Belgium at the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, and said those campaigns left him with a clearer sense of the pressure that comes once knockout football is within reach. Belgium’s quarterfinal win over Brazil in 2018, he said, carried “an enormous psychological barrier,” while the pain of a semifinal defeat in 2022 still stays with him. “Losing a semifinal is somebody taking, ripping your heart away from the dream of being in a cup final,” he said.
That experience now shapes the way he speaks about Portugal’s World Cup squad. The challenge, in his view, is not to chase one perfect moment but to build a team that can absorb uncertainty and still function when the tournament changes shape around it. For Portugal, the next step is simple but severe: the group phase begins immediately, and there is no long runway once the tournament starts.
