The most unlikely of winners of the match, Eder, scored in extra-time to give Portugal their first major tournament win. Eder wore Nike’s Mercurial Vapour VIs.
The Lille striker came on with a little over ten minutes of normal time to play, replacing 18-year-old Sanches, despite scoring just once in the whole tournament. He definitely took a back seat to Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani and even veteran substitute Ricardo Quaresma.
The first half was a very poor one, with chances being very few and far between. Antoine Griezmann did force a save out of Rui Patricio with a looping header, and Moussa Sissoko also burst through the defence and had a powerful shot saved, but that was as much excitement as we had goal wise.
The talking point, though, as we expected was Ronaldo, but not quite for the reasons we thought. An early challenge by Dimitri Payet in which the forward seemed to have won the ball but left a lot on the Madrid man, caused serious discomfort for the Portuguese. Ronaldo literally twisted his leg, and went down in tears fearing his final was over.
He battled on, though, and limped through the next few minutes until he broke with the ball and played a pass. It was then that he signalled to the bench that he would then have to exit the match early. He was stretchered off soon after to an ovation from the majority of the crowd, replaced by Quaresma, with Nani taking the captain’s armband.
The second half was again full of caution from both sides, but did get a bit better. Griezmann headed a great chance over in the 66th minute. Ten minutes later, Olivier Giroud was played in, but his powerful shot from a tight angle was well saved. Sissoko again had an effort late on which forced yet another great save from Patricio.
In added time, Andre-Pierre Gignac had a great opportunity to win it for the French when the ball found him in the area. He turned well but scuffed his shot from close range which bobbled over Patricio but rebounded off the left post.
Into extra-time then, and Eder had the only sniff of a chance in a boring half with a header which was comfortably saved by Hugo Lloris. In the 108th minute, a Raphael Guerreiro free kick from distance was curled beautifully over the wall but it thundered off the crossbar.
Just a minute later, Eder got the breakthrough. He broke away and ran passed the France defence. As he neared the edge of the box, the forward unleashed a powerful effort into the bottom left corner.
The French pressed, but under the new temporary management of Ronaldo orchestrating his side from the technical area, Portugal held out well to stun the pre-tournament favourites. Eder, who has heavily been scrutinised, none more so than when he claimed he could win the Golden Boot for this tournament, got his place in the history books. Was it down to his Nike Mercurial Vapour boots? Some say yes.
