What comes next

The starting point of this cycle is unusual: Portugal are already at the 2030 World Cup without playing a game. As a host nation, alongside Spain and Morocco, they are guaranteed a place at the finals — and FIFA has not even settled whether the tournament will have 48 or 64 teams. That is four years ahead and zero qualifiers to fail.

That changes the nature of the job, and the national team manager himself was the first to say so plainly: "if the national team doesn't play better than it did at the World Cup, I'm not going to do any better". With no qualifiers to cling to, the measure of the work becomes the football itself.

Until then there is the Nations League — which Jesus called "the hardest competition" — and the start could not have gone better: Wales, Norway, Denmark and Norway again, four games, four wins and a quarter-final place secured on 4 October at the Dragão, with two rounds still to play.