The Socceroos matched the highly-fancied French for long periods in Kazan but went down 2-1 to an Antoine Griezmann penalty and an 81st-minute deflected strike by Paul Pogba, either side of Mile Jedinak's goal.
“There’s still mixed emotions. We’re Obviously disappointed because I think we deserved more,” Behich said.
“The performance we put in was different class against a tough opponent. I thought we deserved more but there was a lot of positives to take from this game.
“We should be proud of what we put in. We’ve still got two games to build on this performance. Our focus has already switched to the next game.”
Australia’s second game comes on Thursday in Samara against Denmark.
With the Danes picking up a 1-0 win over Peru in their opener, the Socceroos will need to get a result to keep their hopes of progressing alive heading into the final group match against Peru.
Behich, who was superb at left-back against France, feels the confidence gained from the performance against Les Bleus will have the team in good stead against Denmark.
“Coming into the tournament, the training we’ve put in, in Turkey and here (in Russia) before this first game, we have belief in the group,” he said.
“We have a lot of great players and great leaders to do that and a great coaching staff as well to go with that.
“We knew we could match them [France], we were confident going into this game and we went out there to win.
“We put in a great performance, we were a bit unlucky with the goals, goals you don’t really see in football and decisions. We were a bit unlucky with that but we cop it in the chin and put that behind us now.”
Fellow defender Josh Risdon added: “To know we can come up against the players we did today and put in such a good performance, the whole team was amazing.
“It gives us a lot of confidence going into the next two games. We’re still very much alive in the group.
“If we can take that performance today into the next two games we’ll do ourselves a lot of favours in progressing.”
Sources: www.socceroos.com.au, FIFA.com/Getty
