The tournaments here only include the World Cup and the European Cup.
The title is a bit of a mouthful, so we might as well start with one point and dive in. The so-called second meeting refers to the two teams meeting twice in a single tournament. There are not many such examples, but they are all classic and impressive. To give a few examples, such as the 2002 World Cup, Brazil and Turkey met in the group stage, and in the semi-finals, they met again. Another example is the 1996 European Championship, Germany defeated the Czech Republic in the group stage, and in the final, won the Czech Republic again, and by the way, moved the Delaunay Cup home. Of course, the more famous example is Euro 2004, Portugal and Greece, first played each other in the opening game, and then met in the final, the first and last games, both of them, the proper male number one and the male number two.
Of course, there are many more examples, and I will not list them all. Let's take a look at the characteristics and patterns of the second encounter. In fact, the first meeting must have occurred in the group stage, and then the two teams met again at a certain stage through a flurry move.
The focus is on the stages of the second encounter, which ones are. First of all, the first round of the knockout round will definitely not, after all, the teams in the same group have just advanced, and they will have to meet the teams in other groups. From the above examples, we can see that the semi-finals and finals meet twice.
However, this European Championship may have the first strange scene in the history of the tournament - after the two teams met in the group stage, they may meet for the second time in the quarterfinals, that is, the quarterfinals. Never before in history have two teams met for the second time in the quarter-finals.
Netherlands vs. Austria.
In the group stage, the Netherlands was defeated by Austria 3:2, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in short, the Netherlands, who finished third in the group, got a good division and position after qualifying. In the quarterfinals, the Netherlands' opponent is Romania, although Romania is not weak, but obviously, Belgium is the strongest team in their group. And Romania unexpectedly won the first place in the group, but I didn't expect to receive the benefits that were actually the Netherlands. It's no wonder that some people suspect that Belgium and the Netherlands are playing little ninety-nine.
The problem is that the winner of the Netherlands and Romania will face the winner of Austria and Turkey in the quarter-finals, so it is very likely that the Netherlands and Austria will face each other in the quarter-finals after meeting in the group stage.
So, is this a big possibility? Personally, I think it's big. The strength of the Netherlands is stronger than that of Romania, and this is all in the knockout round, and there is nothing to calculate, one way, win. Austria and Turkey are both dark horses in this European Cup, but obviously, Austria, who beat the Netherlands, has a higher dark horse quality than Turkey.
In fact, in the 24-team competition, there is indeed a certain probability of such a situation, after all, the situation of the third promotion in the group is very chaotic, and even radiation. When teams that shouldn't have qualified as third in their group do qualify in this way, then they risk going down a path that has never been explored before.
Of course, everything needs to be done with the results of the game to open up this possibility, so let's wait and see.