Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of playing in a record-equalling fifth World Cup hang in the balance after Serbia stunned Portugal 2-1 in Lisbon to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.
Spain and Croatia did secure their places in Qatar on Sunday thanks to 1-0 wins over Sweden and Russia respectively.
Ronaldo already holds the record of playing in five European Championships and looked well on course for another milestone as Portgual stormed out of the blocks to open the scoring after just two minutes through Renato Sanches.
However, Serbia bounced back to dominate the remainder of the first half and deservedly levelled when Dusan Tadic’s strike squeezed in off the post after Dusan Vlahovic had hit the woodwork.
Ronaldo was kept quiet as another chance to score his 800th career goal came and went.
Instead it was Aleksandar Mitrovic who grabbed the vital goal as stoppage time approached.
Portugal must now navigate two tricky one-off playoff matches in March to maintain its record of qualifying for every major tournament since the 1998 World Cup.
The results:
Group A: Portugal 1 (Renato Sanches 2) lost to Serbia 2 (Tadic 33, A. Mitrovic 90); Luxembourg 0 lost to Ireland 3 (Duffy 67, Ogbene 75, Robinson 88).
Group B: Greece 1 (Masouras 44) drew with Kosovo 1 (Rrahmani 76); Spain 1 (Morata 86) bt Sweden 0.
Group H: Croatia 1 (Kudryashov 81-og) bt Russia 0; Malta 0 lost to Slovakia 6 (Rusnak 6, 16, Duda 8, 69, 80, De Marco 72); Slovenia 2 (Zajc 48, Gnezda Cerin 84) bt Cyprus 1 (Kakoulli 89).
Group J: Armenia 1 (Mkhitaryan 59-pen) lost to Germany 4 (Havertz 15, Gundogan 45+4-pen, 50, J. Hofmann 64); Liechtenstein 0 lost to Romania 2 (Man 8, Bancu 87); North Macedonia 3 (Alioski 7, Elmas 65, 86) bt Iceland 1 (Thorsteinsson 54) .
