The concentration levels that are needed for a tournament such as the European Championships are unbelievably high. For the weeks that the matches are on, the expectations are high and before you know it, after two matches you are either well on your way or on your way out.

However, in a world where very little is black or white, I am about to make a call that will be deemed crazy by most people. I think Portugal just blew their chances of winning the tournament with the loss against Switzerland.

With the unbeaten run before the tournament and the first two matches, you could see the hunger, the determination and the coming together of the efforts of the team.

Then Luiz Felipe Scolari made a call that I think was fatal to the team by resting his top players in a match he deemed unimportant since they had already qualified.

I am of the opinion that the moment you don’t mind losing a match, then you don’t really mind losing the cup. If you look at most championship sides - and an example from a different sport is the Australian cricket team that has dominated the last couple of World Cups - they will treat a match against Scotland the same way they will treat one against South Africa.

In tournaments of this nature, momentum is everything and you feel a bit of it was Hak-ed by Yakin in Basle. The aura of invincibility is suddenly lost even if the best players were not in.