South Korea vs Portugal LIVE: World Cup 2022 team news and line-ups from Group H as Cristiano Ronaldo starts

Cristiano Ronaldo (8) needs to score just one more World Cup goal to equal Eusebio’s Portugal record of nine.

South Korea have won just five of their 23 World Cup matches against European sides (D6 L12) with each of those five wins coming against a different nation: Poland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Germany.

They have been eliminated in the group stage in eight of their 10 previous World Cup appearances.

Germany’s exit from the World Cup is arguably the biggest surprise of the tournament.

And the news has been greeted with lashings of schadenfreude, and not just among its traditional rivals such as those in England – where Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, who both lost major semi-finals against the German national team – celebrated Germany’s demise.

Also thrilled at Die Mannschaft’s exit – despite beating Costa Rica 4-2 on Thursday night, they went out in a group containing Japan and Spain – was Qatar.

The delight of the World Cup hosts came following a spat earlier in the tournament over the Germans speaking out in favour of LGBT+ rights.

At 19 years and 33 days old defender Antonio Silva is the first ever teenager to appear in a World Cup match for Portugal.

Portugal have found the net in eight successive World Cup games, their longest scoring run in the competition.

They have won their opening two matches for the third time – on the previous two occasions, in 1966 and 2006, they won their final group fixture and went on to reach the semi-finals.

The fans seem up for this one. South Korea’s travelling contingent in particular are flocking to the Education City stadium to see if their team get sneak into the knockout stages.

Portugal’s only defeat in five previous meetings with Asian sides at the World Cup came against South Korea in 2002 with the Portuguese having won three and drawn one of their other four matches versus Asian opponents.

The only previous meeting between South Korea and Portugal was at the 2002 World Cup.

The co-hosts won 1-0 through a goal by Park Ji-sung after a Portugal team including South Korea head coach Paulo Bento had Joao Pinto and Beto sent off.

Portugal have already qualified for the knockout rounds at the 2022 World having already beaten Ghana and Uruguay. They are lookgin to win all three group stage matches for just the third time having done so in 1966 and 2006.

Luis Suarez has been known to lose his temper but he sat there calmly and listened as he was told people in Ghana consider him the devil. Lest there was any scope for misunderstanding, it was translated into his native tongue: El Diablo.

A dozen years on, El Diablo remained unapologetic for one of his more notorious deeds. It is Uruguay against Ghana, the rematch, on Friday and if the stakes are high now, with the loser certain to go out of the World Cup, they were bigger still in 2010. It was the 120^th minute of the quarter-final when the forward who is now Uruguay’s record goalscorer turned goalkeeper, handling to prevent Dominic Adiyah’s header from making Ghana Africa’s first World Cup semi-finalist. Exit Suarez, sent off, only for him to celebrate enthusiastically when Asamoah Gyan ballooned the resulting spot kick over the bar.

Suarez’s stance has remained consistent. “I don’t apologise about that,” he said. “I take the handball but the Ghana player misses a penalty, not me. Maybe I can say apologise if I take a tackle and injure a player and take a red card but in this situation, I take a red card and the referee says penalty. It is not my fault because I don’t miss the penalty. It is not my responsibility to shoot the penalty.”