“We’ve won the respect of all of Europe in this competition”, he said. Portugal had settled for a 3-3 draw with Hungary in their final group game having come from behind three times as Ronaldo scored his first two goals of the tournament. “Croatia played the best football in the group stages but we wouldn’t let them play their counterattacking game”, he said.
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“We can not say football is fair, we had many chances, we dominated for the whole match, so it was not a psychological problem”, said Cacic.
Portugal soaked up enormous pressure, with Quaresma heading Cristiano Ronaldo’s parried shot into an empty net in the 117th minute to secure a 1-0 win and put them into the quarter-finals against Poland.
However, Patricio made himself a hero seconds later when he turned Ivan Perisic’s header onto the post.
“We played great the whole tournament, I can’t believe we have to go home”.
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. In the second pre-quarter match-up of the day, Wales and Northern Ireland fought a cagey, drab match, which was only resolved by an own goal from a Northern Ireland defender, trying to clear a Gareth Bale (who else?) cross.
“We didn’t allow them to counter-attack but going forwards we do have room for improvement”.
“Everything was flawless apart form the fact we didn’t score”. I saw the match, Poland played better, then Switzerland went up for a bit. We weren’t successful in attack.
“We expected Portugal to counter and we were playing really well for 120 minutes, controlling the match, not conceding any chances except the last one that was our mistake and we were punished for that”. They had taken Turkey to the cleaners, nearly tutoring Czech in the art of playing good football before match disruption saw them surrender a 2-goal advantage, and broken Spain unbeaten record of 14 games in the Euros.
With neither side remotely bothering the goalkeepers, extra time was inevitable.
Croatia’s Domagoj Vida, center right, fights for the ball with Portugal’s Pepe during the Euro 2016 round of 16 soccer match between Croatia and Portugal at the Bollaert stadium in Lens, France, on June 25, 2016.
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Mandzukic is a player who is well known around Europe for his strength and aerial ability, but he was arriving into the box far too late and did not compete for any balls in the 18 yard area, with this being the place his team-mates needed him most. Quaresma’s goal was the first shot on target by either side.
