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The late, great Scottish manager Jock Stein had a phrase to describe the conflicting challenges of international football.
He said you had to wear a boiler suit during a qualifying campaign and sweat it out for the right to change into a dinner suit at the finals.
Stein’s comment dates back to a time when tournaments were exclusive parties rather than the month-long jamborees of today, when the European Championship finals featured eight teams rather than the current 24. Qualification was often a gruelling slog, with daunting trips beyond the old Iron Curtain. On several occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, England, France, Italy, Spain and others didn’t make it through to the tournament.
So, it was an evocative line, but it hasn’t aged well. For the bigger European nations, qualifying campaigns these days are often less of a slog and more of a formality. In turn, the group stage at the finals has become less pressurised when, in the case of Euro 2024, all but eight of the 24 competing teams progress to the knockout phase.
It has created a different dynamic. You don’t have to turn up and turn on the style immediately. You don’t have to hit the ground running or else risk arriving home before your postcards. The group stage has become something to navigate without drama while trying to build the rhythm, cohesion and momentum that will be needed when the bigger tests come.
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In some ways, Euro 2024 starts now (Saturday), with the first of the last-16 ties.
That sounds contradictory when we are already 36 games into a 51-game tournament and when the joys of watching three or four matches in a single day give 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.
“It’s just about getting through the group,” Portugal midfielder Bernardo Silva told The Athletic on Wednesday after his team, already confirmed as winners of Group F, lost 2-0 to Georgia in their group finale. “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.
Portugal lost to Georgia in the group stage, but will anyone remember? (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
“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.”
Of the teams in the round of 16, only Spain can claim a 100 per cent record in the tournament so far, emerging from what looked like the toughest group with victories over Croatia (3-0), Italy and Albania (both 1-0). Spain are also the only team not to have conceded a goal. But there is always that danger of being the team that peaked too soon.
Spain’s strong start has evoked comparisons with their success at Euro 2008, which proved to be the breakthrough for a golden generation who went on to also win the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, but their current head coach Luis de la Fuente has warned against such talk. “We know it will be difficult from here now that the best 16 teams are left,” he said. “We are asking for prudence. We all know how things go in Spain: one day, they put you on a high. The next day, they throw you on the floor.”
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And the reverse can apply, in Spain as elsewhere. Just as teams can peak too early in a tournament — Croatia and the Netherlands also won their three group games in Euro 2008, then lost in the first knockout round — so too can a team stumble out of the blocks, scraping their way through the group, then find form as the competition goes on.
A famous example comes from the 1982 World Cup, where Italy drew all three of their first-round games (against Poland, Peru and a hugely unfancied Cameroon) before something clicked in the second group phase, where they beat Argentina and Brazil in their two games, before going on to defeat Poland in the semi-finals, then West Germany to lift the trophy.
Portugal were dreadful in the group stage at Euro 2016, finishing third after draws with Iceland, Austria and Hungary. They improved gradually to beat Croatia in the last 16 (1-0, scoring three minutes from the end of extra time), Poland in the quarter-finals (on penalties, following a grim 1-1 draw) and then surprising-semi-finalists Wales (2-0), but they then defeated France 1-0, also after extra time, in the final. And ultimately, who cares about the how?
France coach Didier Deschamps was heavily criticised when his team started the 2018 World Cup in underwhelming fashion (beating Australia 2-1 and Peru 1-0 and drawing 0-0 with Denmark). Then came the knockout stage and victories over Argentina (4-3), Uruguay (2-0) and Belgium (1-0), before defeating Croatia 4-2 in the final to return from Russia as world champions.
And of course, Argentina’s World Cup-winning campaign in Qatar 18 months ago began with a 2-1 defeat to Saudi Arabia.
None of this means England, France, Italy, Belgium or the Netherlands are guaranteed to “click” after starting Euro 2024 in unconvincing style, but it does at least put some sluggish early performances into context.
“You cannot always read a competition just from the group stage,” Deschamps said after his France side finished second behind Austria in Group D. “It’s a new competition that is starting for us on July 1 (when they play their last-16 tie). It’s going to be a little more down to the wire.”
The concern for Deschamps is that France now find themselves on what looks the more daunting side of the bracket in the knockout phase.
Having failed to win their group, they will now face Belgium. Then it could be Portugal in the quarter-finals and Germany or Spain in the last four. Belgium, likewise, could be left to count the cost of only being runners-up to Romania in Group E.
According to world football governing body FIFA’s rankings, four of the six strongest national teams left in this tournament — France (second), Belgium (third), Portugal (sixth) and Spain (eighth) — are on that side of the draw. So are Germany, whose unflattering ranking (16th) reflects a lack of competitive football since 2022 having qualified automatically for these Euros as hosts.
Things look a little gentler for those on the other side of the bracket. Two of Romania (ranked 47th by FIFA), the Netherlands (seventh), Austria (25th), Turkey (42nd), England (fifth), Slovakia (45th), Switzerland (19th) and Italy (10th) will reach the semi-finals. One of them will be in the final. Of those eight, only Austria and Turkey won more than one of their three group matches, while Slovenia drew all theirs.
England’s need for improvement is obvious, even if head coach Gareth Southgate feels the “noise” around his team’s performances has been overblown. Southgate’s Netherlands counterpart Ronald Koeman has been more strident, describing his team’s 3-2 defeat to Austria in their group finale on Tuesday as “appalling”. “If we want to achieve something at this European Championship, something has to change very quickly,” Koeman said.
Things can change, though.
It doesn’t always require something as drastic as the Ivory Coast sacking their coach Jean-Louis Gasset after the group stage of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations — not certain at that stage whether they would progress to the round of 16 as the fourth-best (of the four to qualify) third-placed team — and then going on to win the tournament under interim boss Emerse Fae.
Ivory Coast sacked their manager after a poor group stage at AFCON in January, then won the tournament (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
Sometimes, a miserable group stage can prompt a tactical rethink and a change of emphasis. Sometimes it can sharpen minds for the more intense challenges ahead. Sometimes, of course, the warning signs are not read or the sense of malaise within the camp is already so deep that it cannot be shrugged off.
Italy coach Luciano Spalletti suggested during the group phase that performance would be key to everything: that the only way to achieve the desired outcome was to get the process right. But, speaking before their middle group match against Spain, he said something else resonated when someone asked him about the Armani suits he and his players were wearing.
“We will go out there in our (collective) Sunday best,” he said with a smile. “And we will be willing to scruff up our beautiful suit if required.”
On reflection, Jock Stein would probably have approved of that.
Everyone wants to arrive in style when it comes to playing on the biggest stages, but what matters more than anything is a team’s ability to drag themselves through the toughest tests, when the stakes are highest, when it gets hot under the collar.
Euro 2024 is about to get serious.
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(Top photo: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)