Portugal Ambitious After Czech Win

Portugal manager Paulo Bento says he doesn’t mind who his side face in the Euro 2012 semifinals after edging past Czech Republic 1-0 in their quarterfinal on Thursday.

Star man Cristiano Ronaldo got the game’s only goal to send the Portuguese into the semifinals where they’ll face the winner of Saturday’s clash between Spain and France.

“In the semi-finals of a great tournament like this, there is always a great team with different characteristics, players of great quality, and well-drilled organisation,” Paulo Bento told reporters.

“We don’t mind who we play. It was a lot of work to get to the semi-finals, so we’ll try to recover the best we can to get out on the pitch in the best condition.

“We have already played in Ukraine, now we’ll go to Donetsk. We have our aim: it’s to win against Spain or France. There can’t be any other goal for us, and we’ll try to do it.”

Midfielder Joao Moutinho said the aim was now to win the whole tournament.

“The ambition now, having gone through to the semi-finals, is to win [the tournament]. Portugal go into every match with the will to win; that’s all we think about,” he said.

“Now we’re going to rest, we’ve got several days to restore our strength. We’ll have all our energy for the semi-finals so that we can reach another final, which would be very important both for Portugal and for us personally.”