Here is Portugal midfielder Bernardo Silva, speaking to The Athletic on Wednesday after his team — already confirmed as winners of Group F — lost 2-0 to Georgia in their group finale:
💬 “It’s just about getting through the group. And then after that, from my experience — not just as a player but as a fan — what happened in the group stage doesn’t mean that much.
“Sometimes, the teams that play better in the group stages are not the (eventual) winners. You need to be stable in the knockout stages. You need to have a bit of luck in these tournaments as well.”
In some ways, Euro 2024 starts now with the round of 16. That sounds contradictory when we were already 36 games into a 51-game tournament and the joys of watching three or four matches in a single day had given way to rest days with none at all.
But this is where the stakes are raised, the pressure is ramped up and one slip — a goalkeeping error, one player suffering a loss of nerve in a penalty shootout — can prove decisive. As we’ve already seen over the last 48 hours.
GO FURTHER
Forget everything you’ve seen at Euro 2024 – the real tournament starts now
