Roberto Martinez and his band of club misfits power Portugal into Euro 2024 finals

There’s not much you can hide from Roberto Martinez if he is your manager. The Spaniard with the amiable manner is a coach of rigour and detail. He’ll personally inspect hotels his team are scheduled to stay at, well ahead of their arriving there. He has on his laptop state-of-the-art technology full of live scouting reports from across the world on how his players are performing, or running, or resting.

Martinez, formerly of Swansea City, Wigan Athletic and Everton, brought the intensive, 24/7 approach of a club manager to his work with the Belgian national team between 2016 and 2022 and now does the same with Portugal. He may only gather his first-team squad together for isolated periods but his scrutiny and planning seldom ebbs.

Fair to report that after seven months in charge of a national squad with huge potential if you add up the sum of its gifted parts, Martinez has made quite the impact.

Portugal have booked their ticket to next summer’s Euro 2024, along with Belgium and France, earliest of anybody apart from hosts Germany and the manner of their qualifying sends out an ominous message. A 100 per cent record from their eight games; 32 goals scored and seven clean sheets.

There’s goodwill in those soaring statistics, too. When Portugal were knocked out of the Qatar World Cup last December, the combined creative influence of Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva and Joao Felix could not find a way past Morocco’s well-organised defence in the quarter-final.

Nor could Goncalo Ramos, the striker who in the previous match – a 6-1 thrashing of Switzerland – had scored a hat-trick. The then manager Fernando Santos, in his last game in charge, brought on Rafael Leao, Serie A’s reigning footballer of the year; he brought on