All hail Portugal

As EURO 2016 comes to an end, the soccer fans will go into hibernation mode until the season reopens in about a month's time.

Before that, let us take a look back at EURO 2016.

Due to the expanded format, we got smaller nations like Northern Ireland, Wales and Iceland taking part in a major tournament.

Credits to them, they performed admirably, especially Wales which went all the way to the semi-finals.

For the traditional powerhouses, they faced-off each other during the knock out stage.

Spain vs Italy, Italy vs Germany, Germany vs France, all "final worthy" match.

European champions had a few surprise winners in the past, most notably Denmark in 1992 and Greece in 2004. We can now add Portugal into the list.

After drawing all their group stage games, no one actually fancy the Portuguese. In fact, they have only won once, against Wales, over the course of 90mins.

But their defensive work put in an excellent shift which resulted in their first major senior silverware.

Therefore it is not surprising to see their best performing players being Raphael Guerreiro (7.45*), Pepe (7.38*) and Cedric Soares (7.34*).

Some might argue that this is anti-soccer, but defense is just as important as attack.

There are also some who said, Portugal is lucky to have gotten "weaker" opponents like Croatia, Poland and Wales enrouted to the final. But hey, you have to make your own luck.

They can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day, Portugal is the King of Europe.

* All statistics from WhoScored.com