Fernando Santos: 'Portugal will be better than France by the start of Euro 2016'

Fernando Santos has insisted that his Portugal team will be better than France by the start of the Euro 2016 tournament next year.

Mathieu Valbuena's late free kick won the friendly for the French on Friday evening, taking their tally of consecutive wins over the Portuguese to 10.

However, the 60-year-old Portugal manager is confident that his side will be able to improve ahead of next year's tournament..

"It's clear that we have to improve our game in some aspects but I guess we had a good performance," Santos told reporters.

"We made it an open game, as I've said, for moments the game was under Portugal's control, in others, it was France time.

"So I guess we showed that we can beat France. It wasn't the case today, here, but I believe it will be so in some months, when we are over there, in France."

Portugal are top of Group I, with Cristiano Ronaldo the group's top goalscorer with five goals.