Soccer: Ronaldo and Pepé made European football history as Portugal faced the Czech Republic

When Portugal-Czech Republic kicked off, two EC records were recorded in Portugal.

Cristiano Ronaldo, 39, became the first player to participate in six European Championship finals. Ronaldo already holds two EC records, with 14 goals and 25 games played since his debut at EC 2004, where Portugal reached the final.

European Championship in soccer

Defender Pepe also became the EC’s oldest player of all time at 41 years and 113 days. The previous record holder, Hungary goalkeeper Gabor Kiraly, was 40 years and 86 days old when he played in Euro 2016.

But for a long time it looked like the record match would be something of an anticlimax.

Portugal equalized

The Czech Republic took the lead, when Lukas Provod put a shot into the post after just over an hour of play.

But eight minutes later, Portugal equalized somewhat fortunately, when the Czech Republic’s goalkeeper Jindrich Stanek headed a not too hard header straight at a defender and the ball went into his own goal.

Ronaldo offside

With less than four minutes of regular time remaining, however, it looked as if Ronaldo would help his team to victory when he headed the ball onto the post, after which Diogo Jota put the ball into the goal.

But on the VAR images, it appeared that Ronaldo was in an offside situation, and the goal was ruled out.

But in extra time, the ball found its way to substitute Francisco Conceição, who made his debut in the national team as recently as March – and he was able to decide with his very first contact with the ball in the match.

– Very frustrating, we wanted those points. We looked to be heading for victory, but we conceded a goal a little unluckily. We wanted to bring more and have the points, but this is football and now we need to win the next game, says Czech team captain Tomas Soucek to SVT Sport.