Portugal's 2-1 victory over the Netherlands in the semifinals of Euro 2004 triggered the biggest ever street party in Lisbon, with tens of thousands of people celebrating until the early hours of yesterday morning.

　　The marques de Pombal and Rossio squares were flooded with ecstatic Portuguese and traffic was stopped until 3:00am. Cheering fans wrapped in flags and scarves in national colors climbed statues and national monuments.

　　"I never stopped believing, I never stopped believing," screamed a fan running down Lisbon's main boulevard, Avenida da Liberdade, with nothing on but a pair of underwear and giant flag wrapped around his neck.

　　It was Portugal's first semifinal win at a major tournament. On Sunday, the host nation will face either Greece or the Czech Republic in the final at Lisbon's Stadium of Light.

　　Dutch and Portuguese fans celebrated together, exchanging shirts and national flags and mingling freely without any reported incidents.

　　Manchester united player Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored the first goal for Portugal, was the hero of the night.

　　Groups of girls with Ronaldo's No. 17 shirt jumped up and down in joy in the bar and restaurant area of Bairro Alto chanting "Cristiano, we love you!"

　　"I would have his children!" said one of the girls, 20-year-old student Catia Fernandes.

　　A shirtless picture of Ronaldo and a single headline - "Brave" - took up the entire front page of sports newspaper O Jogo, while a headline in Record screamed "The strength that no one can stop." Record and another sports newspaper, A Bola, featured pictures of Figo, Ronaldo and the Portuguese team hugging their coach.

　　In fact, ecstatic Portugal fans partied from China to the Azores on Wednesday.

　　Caravans of honking cars jammed with fans shut down traffic in the whitewashed centers of towns in the rolling Alentejo, Portugal's main agricultural region.

　　Flags were waved from balconies over cobblestoned streets filled with cheering fans on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the remote Azores, radio stations reported.

　　Portugal prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, named to head the European Commission this week, told the Lusa news agency, "The final? As I've said before, the sky's the limit."

　　On the other side of the world, thousands of cheering supporters thronged streets in Dili, the capital of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, just before dawn yesterday, the Lusa news agency reported.

　　Hundreds of sleepless Portuguese defied high winds and rain kicked up by Typhoon Mindulle to crowd bars in Macau, a one-time Portuguese enclave on China's coast, to watch the win on TV and celebrate, Lusa said.

　　(Reuters/AP)