Portugal’s veteran captain Luis Figo has been left out of the starting line-up for Saturday’s World Cup third-place play-off against Germany in Stüttgart.

Simao Sabrosa has been chosen by the Portugal head coach Luiz Felipe Scolari to replace Luis Figo for the match after reports that Figo had a bust-up with the Portugal boss, which has relegated the Inter Milan star to the bench for the match.

This was expected to be Figo’s last ever match for Portugal, and if this is indeed a snub from ‘Big Phil’, then the match against France in the semi-final may well be the former Real Madrid winger’s last ever appearance for his country.

Scolari is without defender Miguel, who misses the game because of a knee injury and Chelsea defender Ricardo Carvalho, who is suspended for the match, after having received two yellow-cards in the knock-out phase. He is replaced by his Chelsea team-mate Paulo Ferreira.

Germany defenders Per Mertesacker and Arne Friedrich are both replaced by Middlesbrough’s Robert Huth and Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Marcell Jansen for the third-place play-off match against Portugal.

Striker Miroslav Klose returns to the team after recovering from injury, with the Polish-born forward hoping to add to his tally of four goals and secure the Golden Boot award.

Starting line-ups for the third-place play-off between Germany and Portugal:

Substitutes

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati