The Euro 2016 campaign may not have gone to plan for Sebastian Prodl’s Austria but his country still managed to hold their own against eventual winners Portugal.

The Austrians came into this summer’s tournament in France with high hopes of competing after qualifying impressively for the finals.

But expectations of a decent run in the competition failed to materialise as Austria disappointingly finished bottom of the group.

Prodl said: “Obviously I enjoyed the experience. It was a great experience but in the end the results were disappointing because we had high expectations going into the tournament.

“It wasn’t the results we wanted but it was a good tournament with nice stadiums. It was a great experience and hopefully I can play in such a great tournament again.

“In the tournament we didn’t play the football we played during the qualification. We were not in our best shape and a lot of our players weren’t at our best shape for the tournament in a physical way with some injuries and not playing so much before.

“There’s no time during a tournament and it was quite hard for us. The defeat against Hungary made it even worse for us.”

The high point of the tournament for Austria came after holding Portugal to a goalless draw and Prodl played the entire match in Paris.

The Watford defender joked: “In the end we were as good as the European champions because we drew against Portugal!

“I think everyone was surprised [they won] but you can’t win a tournament without luck.

“They got an easier route to the final but if you win a title you deserve it in the end.”

Prodl added: “We played against a very offensive Portugal so we were defending all the time. Ronaldo missed a penalty and we were a little bit lucky in the end but we deserved a point.

“We had a chance to qualify for the next round but didn’t take this opportunity against Iceland in the final game.”