Don't blame Portugal for their pragmatism - France's own frailty cost them Euro 2016 glory

Lucky Portugal? Maybe.

Ugly Portugal? Certainly.

But effective Portugal? Yes.

That Cristiano Ronaldo was off the field when victory was sealed, that he didn’t play the last 95 minutes of Sunday’s final, said everything about how Portugal have changed. Beginning with the win over Croatia they had ceased to be about Ronaldo and became about the unit of dynamic midfielders: their success in his absence merely emphasised that.

[ANALYSIS: No limits to Ronaldo's greatness as he has his Maradona moment]

Portugal for years have had two problems. Firstly, their lack of a central striker and, secondly, their reliance on Ronaldo. Everything became about how best to utilise Ronaldo in the side. Should he be deployed on the flank as he is at Real Madrid, or more centrally to get him into the game more? In the end Santos solved both questions with the same answer: he used Ronaldo as the centre-forward.

"Throughout the tournament,” Santos said, “we are as simple as doves, and wise as serpents."

Who knows what that means, but if he means that the simplest solution can sometimes be the most cunning then it makes sense. Keep it tight, get the ball forward, see what happens. And of course when your front two are Ronaldo and Nani, the chances of something happening are relatively high.

There will be those who say that with the resources at his disposal, Santos should have done more, that he could have played more attacking or more thrilling football. But not many of them will be from Portugal. After the shambles in the 3-3 draw against Hungary, Santos went back to basics. He left out Ricardo Carvalho and settled on a midfield four that featured three runners snapping and tackling around William Carvalho, who grew as the tournament went on.

William Carvalho is a slightly ungainly footballer, his limbs seemingly too long for his body, but he is more than just a destroyer. Against France, he made two tackles, an interception and eight clearances but he also maintained a 92% pass completion rate. He won the ball and he didn’t give it away, while holding a position just in front of the back four, operating as a kind of breakwater.

Positioning was everything. The midfield four protected the back four. There was rarely more than 15 yards between the two lines. Asked to find space against such a structure, Antoine Griezmann was at a loss.

So too was Olivier Giroud, who won just two aerials all game, so outmuscled was he by Jose Fonte and Pepe. Payet had his poorest game of the tournament, overwhelmed by Raphael Guerreiro, who made three tackles and six interceptions in the game. Only Moussa Sissoko showed glimmers of menace, but even that seemed like a mistake, a midfield set up by Didier Deschamps to get the best out of its weakest component.

And that is a lingering theme: just as credit must go to Santos, so too must there be blame for Deschamps.

All tournament he’s struggled to get the balance right in his midfield, paying perhaps for the lack of a true holding player. As Portugal showed, there is virtue in getting the simple pragmatic things right.

Throughout the tournament, Deschamps had wavered between a 4-3-3 and a 4-2-3-1 - not, it seemed, because he was selecting game by game according to circumstance; but because he simply didn’t know which the more effective system was.

The problem is that both were flawed. The 4-3-3 was solid through midfield but lacked fluency and guile; the 4-2-3-1 got Griezmann close to Giroud and so enhanced France’s attacking threat, but it left France vulnerable, particularly when neither of the pair was a true holder.

Having Paul Pogba alongside Blaise Matuidi meant France had two tacklers, two workers, players who can run all day and enjoy doing so. But both seemed constrained by the set up, and that in turn cost France some fluency. It was as though both felt they had to sit deep, both were reining themselves in.

That was exacerbated by the reluctance of the full-backs, Patrice Evra and Bacary Sagna, to get forward – Sagna didn’t put in a single cross that found its man in 120 minutes; Evra just three. There was nobody to change angles, nobody to offer a difference of attacking depth.

Perhaps having selected the squad he had, Deschamps had no option, but it felt a lot as though he was suffering from an embarrassment of riches, that he ended up picking players because of a perception they were good rather than with any clear tactical plan.

Even his substitutions seemed odd. Bringing on Kingsley Coman made sense. His pace did stretch Portugal and created two chances – the header that Griezmann put over and the chance that Giroud saw saved.

But replacing Giroud with Andre-Pierre Gignac was mystifying. Gignac is slow, a little flat-footed and good in the air. There is a place for him, but it is against defences that might struggle in the air – not against a Portugal team which featured Pepe and Jose Fonte happily lapping up a diet of crosses. Anthony Martial, perhaps, quicker, smarter in the box, might have been more capable of finding the angles, of snaffling something on the box.

The story of this tournament has been of teams struggling to break down tight defences, so perhaps it was fitting that the final should be based around that theme – and fitting too that the champions should be the side with the tightest defence. One goal conceded in 420 minutes of knockout football by Portugal tells its own story.

In that statistic is written the biggest problem of international football: attacks are under-coached, not as slick as they are at club level, and the result is that they are more easily thwarted by massed defences.

As for the winning goal itself? There were so many players at fault for Eder’s winner it’s hard to know where to begin, but letting a forward run across the pitch through four half-challenges and then bury a shot from 30 yards was shocking defending.

Having run out of attacking ideas, France did what Portugal had never done and lost discipline at the back. They'd worked doggedly to break down Portugal, yet in the end what cost then tournament was nothing more than a moment of basic defensive laxity.