Fifty-eight days. That’s the gap between the apex of Portugal’s footballing achievement—winning the Euro 2016 final—and their next competitive match, as they start out on the road to Russia in a 2018 World Cup qualifier in Switzerland.
Barely has the ticker tape floated down from the sky to the ground and Fernando Santos’ team are back grinding.
That’s how it happens, as Italy’s 2006 World Cup winners could tell you. Having edged out France to lift the trophy in Berlin, they were given a chasing by the same opposition 59 days later in a visceral Euro 2008 qualifier in front of a full house at the Stade de France.