Euro 24: Hamburg Long Night Ends In Penalties; Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal Knocked Out (Image: x.com/EURO2024)
It was a long night in Hamburg, and it ended in penalties and also in the exit of Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal. When the biggest football star, who was likely playing his last major game, boarded the bus home, France marched to the Euro 2024 semifinals on the shoulders of a confident goalkeeper Mike Maignan. He was ably supported by Bradley Barcola, Ousmane Dembele, Youssouf Fofana, Theo Hernandez, and Jules Kounde, who all found the net without error.
What Roberto Martinez and Didier Deschamps had planned when their famous teams met at Volksparkstadion Hamburg during the quarterfinals of the Euro 2024 remains a mystery. The entire match, featuring world-famous players like Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal and Kylian Mbappe for France, resembled a long-drawn cold war between two equal powers. Each team took its time to make excursions into the opposing side’s goal boxes at intervals, returning without much result. The entire game continued this way. When they weren’t doing that, the famed midfields of both teams engaged in fruitless duels.
The match, which resembled a soap opera, dragged on with Eduardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni, and N’Golo Kante on one side, and Joao Palhinha, Bruno Fernandes, and Bernardo Silva on the other, passing and mispassing the ball for reasons only they knew.
The only consolation throughout the match came from the spectacular French defense, consisting of Dayot Upamecano, Jules Kounde, William Saliba, and Theo Hernandez, who displayed class against the raging Portuguese.
For most of the time, both Kylian Mbappe and Cristiano Ronaldo were toothless lions. Mbappe had his chances, especially in the last minutes of the regulation time of the game, but his efforts were in vain as the shots lacked the purpose of achieving something extraordinary, namely, putting the ball in the net.
The statistics from regulation time tell the story. On a field graced by stars like Ronaldo, Mbappe, Dembele, Kolo Muani, Rafael Leao, Griezmann, Marcus Thuram, Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva and Kante, there were only 25 shots, of which only eight were on target.
The French attack was minimal until the introduction of Ousmane Dembele in the 67th minute when he replaced Antoine Griezmann, who had been wandering the field like a ghost from his glorious past.
It was a frustrating night for both teams, especially for Didier Deschamps, who watched his forward line reach the Portugal box with great anticipation only to see their shots misfire to the space instead of the goal post. He was justified when out of form masked man Kylian Mbappe was replaced by Bradley Barcola during the interval of the extra time.
