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<\/p>\nThe victory over Serbia lifted the European champions to second place in Group B on five points from three games, eight behind runaway leaders Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Ukraine have 13 points from five matches after their 3-0 win in Lithuania earlier on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Third-placed Luxembourg and Serbia in fourth both have four points from as many games while Lithuania are bottom with one point from four matches.<\/p>\n
Portugal dominated the opening half and Carvalho fired them ahead in the 42nd minute when he poked the ball into an empty net from three metres.<\/p>\n
Serbia goalkeeper Marko Dmitrovic had spilled a Bruno Fernandes cross from the right.<\/p>\n
Cristiano Ronaldo looked subdued in the opening half.<\/p>\n
He was given a hostile reception at Red Star stadium as Serbian fans jeered him every time he touched the ball, but he twice came close early in the second half.<\/p>\n
He fired inches wide from the edge of the penalty area after cutting in from the left and then curled a free-kick narrowly off target.<\/p>\n
Forward Guedes then doubled Portugal\u2019s lead with a fine individual effort.<\/p>\n
He capped a flowing move as he sidestepped a defender and rifled in an unstoppable shot past Dmitrovic into the far corner from 12 metres to silence the raucous home crowd.<\/p>\n
Centre-back Nikola Milenkovic pulled one back for Serbia in the 68th minute, heading a Dusan Tadic corner past goalkeeper Rui Patricio.<\/p>\n
Taunted by chants of \u201cMessi\u201d from Serbia\u2019s die-hard fans, Ronaldo demonstrated his class in the 80th minute.<\/p>\n
He took a Bernardo Silva pass in his stride and coolly dinked the ball over the advancing Dmitrovic.<\/p>\n
Serbia refused to roll over as Aleksandar Mitrovic drove a shot from inside the penalty area into the roof of the net after a defensive blunder in the 85th minute.<\/p>\n
But Silva sealed the contest with a clinical finish barely 60 seconds later.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal got their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign back on track with goals from William Carvalho, Goncalo Guedes, Cristian Ronaldo and Bernardo Silva in a pulsating 4-2 victory in Belgrade on Saturday. The victory over Serbia lifted the European champions to second place in Group B on five points from three games, eight behind runaway leaders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/150405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}