Bruno Fernandes scores twice as Portugal seal their place at World Cup finals

Bruno Fernandes scored twice as Portugal sealed their place in their sixth consecutive World Cup finals with a 2-0 win over North Macedonia in Porto.

Fernandes ended the visitors’ resistance with a 32nd-minute opener after being played in by a neat bit of skill by Cristiano Ronaldo.

From that moment on there was little danger of the North Macedonians repeating the heroics that saw them dump Italy out of the tournament with a dramatic late winner in Palermo last week.

Fernandes sealed his side’s passage to Qatar in the 65th minute when he finished off a lightning counter-attack by stroking the ball past keeper Stole Dimitrievski.

Poland joined Portugal in Qatar after securing a similarly straightforward 2-0 win over Sweden in Chorzow.

The Poles, granted a bye to the final qualifying stage following the expulsion of Russia, led through Robert Lewandowski’s 49th-minute penalty before a 74th-minute effort from Piotr Zielinski sealed the deal.

Sadio Mane slotted the decisive penalty to send Senegal to the finals while his Liverpool team-mate Mohamed Salah suffered shoot-out heartbreak for Egypt.

Mane’s spot-kick concluded a dramatic second leg in Diamniadio after Hamdi Fathi’s fourth-minute own goal hauled the hosts level following Egypt’s 1-0 win in Cairo on Friday night.

The result was a repeat of the Africa Cup of Nations final two months ago when Mane again scored the winning penalty against the same opponents.