The unprecedented "super food chain", Ronaldo (above) continues to wait for the historical goal record, the "top half of death" where the giants are gathered in the upcoming 1/8 finals...... After nearly two weeks of fierce battles, all 36 group stage matches of Euro 2024 have been completed, and the place in the round of 16 has finally been finalized. Compared with the first two rounds that were not shocking, the suspense of the final round of the matchup related to promotion was repeated, and all kinds of unexpected "upsets" once again proved that the green feast at the top of the continent lived up to its name, and all kinds of rare promotion rules also appeared in front of fans one by one.
For example, in Group E, the "wonder" of qualifying continued from the beginning to the end, and used extremely real evidence to popularize the science competition system for fans: after the first two rounds, the Belgian team defeated the Romanian team 2:0, Romania defeated the Ukrainian team 3:0, the Ukrainian team reversed the Slovak team 2:1, and the Slovak team defeated the Belgian team 1:0, and the 4 teams are all 1 win and 1 loss, with 3 points, and the final round has the possibility of qualifying.
In this regard, after the Belgian team and the Ukrainian team played a 0:0 draw at the end of the game, and the Slovak team also drew 1:1 with the Romanian team, the four teams finally accumulated four points, which was the first time in the history of the European Championship since 1960. Under the rule of "comparing goal difference and total goals in turn with the same record", Romania (above) won the first place in the group, Belgium ranked second, Slovakia occupied third, and all entered the round of 16, and the Ukrainian team, which also had a record of 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss, but a goal difference of -2, became the first team in history to accumulate 4 points but failed to qualify.
In a side-by-side comparison, 16 teams advanced from the top two teams in six groups, including the best third-place finishers in four groups, meaning that only eight teams were eliminated. Ukraine (4 points) was in fact the same as the Netherlands (Group D), Slovakia (Group E) and Georgia (Group F), who qualified in third place, and even better than Slovenia (Group C, who drew 1-1 with Denmark and Serbia and 0-0 with England in the group stage).
There are also many highlights, such as the "dark horse" expected by the outside world, and now it is the Georgian team (pictured above) that defeated the favorite Portugal team 2:0 in the final round - the first time on the stage of the European Cup, ranked only 74th in the world, but still completed the amazing "super counterattack" of the Georgian team, the first game lost 1:3 to the Turkish team "scored a goal", and the second game drew 1:1 with the Czech team to "get a point", After successively completing the phased goals, the final game against the substitute lineup of the favorite Portugal team, Completed the opening blitz strongly, and then ended the suspense with a penalty, refusing to become the "background board" of Ronaldo's European Cup goal record, and at the same time leaping forward with his head held high.
Equally rare is the "Harmony-Oriented" Group C, which has seen five draws in six matches, and the most recent of these events was the 1982 World Cup, when Italy, Poland, Cameroon and Peru were drawn. In addition to the 5-point advance of the England team, the second-place Danish team and the third-place Slovenian team have 3 points and a goal difference of 0, and they have a 1:1 handshake with each other (above).
It's not that the Danish team and the Slovenian team are also in a group (a total of 55 teams participated) in this European Championship qualifiers, and the final record of the two sides is 7 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses, accumulating 22 points, and the overall is still difficult to distinguish. In the end, the Danish team won 1-1 against each other, and after the qualifiers, they once again beat their opponents and advanced to the round of 16 by finishing second in the group - is this a familiar story? Yes, in the European Championship after the first expansion to 24 teams, the 2016 champions Portugal drew three times in a row.
No matter how special the road to promotion is, the final mood is naturally hearty. In addition to the Ukrainian team, the Hungarian team in Group A and the Croatian team in Group B also failed to go ashore as the third team in the group: the Croatian team, which is currently ranked ninth in the world, suffered a "draw" with the defending champion Italy in the final round of the group stage, and the golden generation of the "Plaid Army" represented by Modric (above) may come to an end; Hungary, which managed to beat Scotland 1:0 in the final round, failed to finish one of the four third-place teams with the best results, because of the goal difference constraint (1:3 loss to Switzerland, 0:2 to the host German team).
After all kinds of "divine plots", the 1/8 finals of this European Cup are completely finalized, and a new round of suspense escalation is brewing: the Spanish team (pictured above), the only team that won all three games in the group stage, sits in the upper half of the zone, against the Georgian team, the host German team faces the Danish team, the Portuguese team faces the Slovenian team, and the French team, which has not yet scored in the sports battle, will meet the Belgian team that is also underperforming; In the second half, Romania vs. the Netherlands, Austria vs. Turkey, England vs. Slovakia, Switzerland vs. Italy – after two days of buffering, the powerhouses continued to play!
Text: Wang Chenzheng
Photo: Xinhua News Agency