Poortugal are there, because they couldn't outperform Serbia, Italy was there, because they couldn't get past the Swiss. It's not the system that's broken, two favorites just messed up their group games.
And naturally the Macedonians will need some luck to get past Portugal, but the fact that they already had some luck against Italy has no bearing on that, beyond giving them some confidence maybe.
Well, basically Italy went to play-offs due to Jorginho missed penalties against Switzerland.
They actually played pretty good football and dominated, unlike Portugal.
It can happen though, sometimes players miss a crucial penalty, it was very weird to see Jorginho missing penalties(he is very good at them), but it happened...this is Football.
I don't think Macedonia will beat Portugal, they will need some massive luck to do it.
They already had luck against Italy, i don't think they will have luck two times in a row.
I can see Portugal scoring fast, and Macedonia crumbling when looking for the equalizer, macedonian attackers seemed very limited going forward, and lost the ball easily due to lack of quality.
Italy midfield is obviously much better than Portugal, but Portugal has Cristiano who is a much better finisher than Immobile(who has been useless for Italy).