Fernando Santos admits room for improvement as Portugal edge into last eight

Portugal and Croatia are heading to extra time, tied 0-0 after a poor 90 minutes of play at the European Championship.

Finally, Portugal and Croatia played out 120 minutes which could have put many to sleep.

The match in Lens was abysmal.

Neutrals will simply hope for some more of the end-to-end, shifting momentum that characterised th match. Croatia came close to taking the lead just seconds earlier, as Ivan Perisic headed an effort against the post. Modric, who had been sitting deep, started to push forward.

But against Portugal their form went missing.

Croatia’s first effort was Ivan Perisic’s 30th-minute shot, which he dragged wide of the goal.

It was much the same for the second-half but the best chance fell to another defender just after the hour mark.

It brought a brilliant finish to the match, and one the terrible 115 minutes beforehand just didn’t deserve. “Our team believes very much that we can achieve something here”.

Croatia coach Ante Cacic said, “Everything was flawless except the score. we didn’t expect Portugal to play counter-attack”. We waited for the mistake and in the end we scored one goal and it was a fantastic, incredible feeling. He has already broken records as the only player to score in four editions of the competition and for appearances, yet Portugal’s exits have been among the most painful moments of his career.

Portugal came into this tournament desperate to shrug off their reputation as being the almost men of worldwide football.

“Everything was flawless except we didn’t score”, Cacic told reporters.

“We knew it was going to be a hard game for the attacks especially to get space”, Bale said.

“Preparing for this match, we tried to improve our penalties, and we knew they’d be taken in the best possible way”, Poland coach Adam Nawalka said through a translator.

The Portugal-Croatia match might have been boring with no shots on goal but the end of the game was pretty interesting according to this Twitter account.

An exciting contest was expected but to everyone’s disappointment neither team really looked like they wanted to win the game.

We were ready for them and we set up to resist their strengths and take advantage of their weak spots. Sometimes you have to be pragmatic.

This game made Nani become the fourth player to win 100 caps for Portugal.

When Euro 2016 winds up on July 10 and the trophy is handed over, the memories of Croatia’s last-16 defeat will be long forgotten by most neutrals. And sadly, the new favorites to win the European Championships have learnt the lesson the bitter way.

“We were trying to push, trying to be aggressive”.

Instead they got to see two hours of cagey, nervy football with only one shot on target amid some shocking finishing until mercurial Ricardo Quaresma lit up the stadium with his victor three minutes from the end of extra time.

-Croatia had 17 shots but none were on target. Their game plan was executed perfectly in the defensive phase of play, with Northern Ireland probably banking on space opening up late on as Wales chased the victor.