Portugal becomes Champion of Europe

Coming into the knockout stage as best losers, Portugal has defeated the host and hard fighting France to win the Euro 2016 Cup. And climbing through the 24 team tourney that had Spain, Germany, Italy and the host team, France to contend with, Portugal beat punter's expectations to clinch the trophy, becoming the reigning European Champions at least for another 2 years. Portugal was the finalist at the 2004 edition of the tournament.

After a deafeningly intense struggle by both sides that went beyond the regular playtime of 90 minutes of footballing. It was not at the 109th minute that Anthony Eder broke the  jink with a right footed shot from some distance that saw the back of the French team's net. It was Portugal 1 and France Nil.

While the intensity grew, world's prolific winger and highest paid athlete was injured at the 16th minute, and was subbed and stretched out on the 25th minutes into the match and replaced by Quaresma. His injury, besides personally paining the three time Ballon d'Or winner, was a defining moment for the Portuguese team who had lost one of its strategic forces. However, despite the loss of Cristiano Ronaldo to injury, the French team could not break Portugal although Sissoko kept on being a terror to the Portuguese defence. He came close a couple of times to opening the scoresheet especially on  the 33rd minute and 83rd minute, but both  strikes were parried by Patricio. The defiance  of the Rui Patricio denied the French the win on home soil, forcing the game to live out its 90 minutes regular time.

Even after half of the extra time, the scoreline remained goalless. At this moment, however, Anthony Eder had already come in as a substitute for Sanches Renato at the 77th minute and came very close to scoring at the 103rd minute when he leaped high to head the ball toward the French team's goal post, but was parried by Lloris.

The jinx was broken by the 109th minute strike by Eder, which gave Portugal the cup. In an ironical situation, Portugal was denied the cup after losing to Greece in 2004 while on home soil. At that match, Portugal lost to Greece by One goal to nothing at the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon. Fast forward to 2016, the team took a revenge on the tournament by denying France a celebration on home soil beating France by one goal to nothing.