Hard work ahead for Fernando Santos' Portugal

Iceland, Austria and Hungary will all pose different challenges to Portugal, says coach Fernando Santos, who will spend the next six months looking for ways to overcome their three Group F rivals.

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Fernando Santos, Portugal coach
I said before the draw that the most important thing was to get to know who we would face so we could start to study and analyse our opponents. I don't believe in easy groups or difficult groups. What I believe in is work – it's by working that we get results. We have to respect all our opponents and find solutions to beat them.

Iceland are a team that's improved a lot over the last few years and already went so close to getting to the last World Cup, reaching the play-offs. This time they qualified directly from their group, eliminating the Netherlands in the process, which says a lot about their potential.

Austria are also a team that, despite not being regulars in big tournaments lately, have been improving and have great players like David Alaba, Christian Fuchs and Marko Arnautovic. They finished their group on a high and we will have to be careful with them.

Finally, Hungary are probably the opponent we know the least because we have not faced them for a long time, but we all know they have had a great goalkeeper for several years now in Gábor Király. They also have other quality players but the most important thing about our opponents is that they will all be very motivated to play against Portugal.