Thursday 26 June 2014 23:07, UK
Portugal coach Paulo Bento has admitted his side were not good enough to make it to the last-16 of the World Cup finals, after seeing them go out in the group stages.
Bento's team won their final clash in Group G, 2-1 against Ghana, but they went out on goal-difference with the United States joining Germany in the knockout phase.
But Bento had few arguments about going out and said: "We created a lot of opportunities and we deserved to win by a bigger margin which would have given us a chance to qualify.
"Of course the balance of our World Cup is negative. We didn't achieve our first aim which was to progress to the second round of the competition.
"We have what we deserve. The two teams that have gone through have done so on merit.
"Now we must analyse what went wrong and congratulate Germany and the United States for progressing."
Bento did take some satisfaction from Portugal's response to their opening game nightmare against Germany.
Portugal lost 5-1 in their group opener before holding USA to a 2-2 draw.
"In the second and third game we gave a different image of what we are worth than in our first," the 45-year-old said.
"As I said, the Germany game affected us, because we played in numerical inferiority, because it was a heavy defeat and also because a few players got injured."
