Eh, at least Pepe and Nani behaved today. France missed on so many chances, the loss can only be called deserved, especially after that fantastic ball from Coman that Griezman managed to send to his grandma.

Congrats to Portugal and hopefully a fully recovered Ronaldo ready for the season in august.

You bring up a very interesting subject! Everytime somebody won, it's so interesting to see what will be "the talk" going into the next tournament.

I remember Greece had sort of a cocky aura around them (fans mostly) and even some level of expectations among some experts after they had won Euro 2004 when they were playing the pre-tournament Confederations Cup, being invited as Euro champions. But then they didn't even qualify for the World Cup itself. That kind of settled the matter.

If we consider the fact that all the big nations or quite equal in power, so in the sense that there are about 10 nations having a good chance at winning any World Cup, in that sense Portugal today strengthened its position to be one of the favorites.

But when we are talking about what you really mean, when two or three nations are being widely talked about as the favorites, like France and Brazil were mentioned before the World Cup 1998, like Germany and Brazil were mentioned before World Cup 2002, and like Spain was before 2010 and 2014, then no, Portugal won't be regarded as that strong favorites by anybody.

But I think there's a lot of psychology in this, so they certainly could have passed a number of nations in some minds, like Argentina who just lost, and Belgium who nearly made a fiasco, two teams that are a bit better on paper.

So let's see, possible favorites to win World Cup in Russia 2018:

Germany
Spain
France
Brazil

Portugal
Argentina
Belgium
Italy

Poland
Holland
England
Chile
Croatia

So yeah, with a little stretching I could see Portugal get into the top 5.

I could see the talk go like this: people will mention three or four equally strong favorite teams and Portugal thanks to winning Euro 2016 will be constantly be mentioned just after those as the "outsider" or "dark horse". That's the kind of respect they gained today.

No. I don't know how to rank Brazil, nor Argentina or Chile properly right now. But I understood they were bad in Copa America. I just had a quick glance at the names in their recent squads and how many top players they have in top European clubs and probably mixed in some historical nostalgia and based it on that.

You are welcome to inform me about all the top South American teams!

The salt in the title xD congrats to Portugal, deserved to win something for a while

never rule them out 

That's because you had unrealistic expectations for a competition involving European nations. 

Here's some advice.  Go to the matches you'll enjoy them more.  The worst of my 7 matches on paper was Romania vs Switzerland.  You'd think that would be shit but attending it was very fun. 

And it's not too expensive if you plan right.  My France v Ireland last 16 ticket cost 25 euro and the seat was great. 

Brazil did lose two of their most important players in the quarter final though. Who knows what the outcome had been if Brazil had had Neymar and Silva.

Didn't know Greece won Euro 2014. Heck, didn't even know there was a Euro in 2014.

Quarterfinals? Brazil didnt even make it out of their group, Though it was a hard group admittedly with the football powerhouses that did manage to make it out of the group, Ecuador and Peru :)

Bro, be classy on your success as well.

Ronaldo wasn't even your best player in the competition. Show some love to Pepe and Patricio as well.