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Chaotic off the pitch but a success on it - Ken Early’s review of the Euro 2024 group stages

Spain shine as England labour to progress, with Austria and Switzerland making the most of their limited squads

Turkey's players celebrate their team's third goal against Georgia. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty

Ken Early's face
Ken Early in Berlin
Wed Jun 26 2024 - 19:50

Munich, Friday, June 14th, the opening day of Euro 2024, kick-off minus five-and-a-half hours. A large crowd has formed at a barrier on the long path that leads from the Fröttmaning train station to the Allianz Arena. The security officials have told everyone they cannot let anyone in until 4pm. Everyone waits.

At 4pm the expectant crowd presses forward. The ticket scanners immediately stop working. Nobody is moving. Disgruntlement is spreading rapidly. “It’s chaos, chaos!” shouts the security man who seems to be in charge. The time is 4:02pm. This doesn’t feel like a promising start.

Still, the chaos eventually resolves into something resembling order. We all get in, the Scotland fans sing their lungs out, Germany score five goals and everyone goes home more or less happy, give or take the odd unexplained stoppage on the packed and sweaty train back to the city.

There has been much more chaos at this tournament than anyone would have encountered in Qatar. The new Doha metro works better than any comparable system in Germany, which is ironic given that German companies including the reviled Deutsche Bahn played a major role in its design and construction, and the tunnels through which the driverless Qatari trains sped were bored by German diggers.

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The thing you learn about chaos, though, is it’s most annoying when it takes you by surprise. Once you accept in advance that there will be delays, queues, time spent inexplicably waiting, you lose a lot of the outrage and indignation that makes those experiences so aggravating.

As the group stage comes to an end the German organisers can feel relieved and pleased: the tournament has, despite everything, been a big success so far. Yes, the media hype anticipating a “Sommermärchen 2.0″ proved overblown – if you were here during the 2006 World Cup you can see that the excitement levels in the host nation are not comparable to the mania of that summer. But then the Euros is not the World Cup.

Portugal's forward Cristiano Ronaldo greets a young pitch invader. Photograph: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty

One obvious positive difference from Qatar 2022 is that the streets and stadiums are packed with travelling supporters – Scots and Croats and Turks and Dutch and Austrians and Albanians and English and Swiss. Only the Argentines and Saudis travelled in big numbers to Doha.

The huge contingents of travelling supporters have created immense atmospheres at many of the matches, with those of Scotland, Hungary, Austria and Croatia standing out as especially passionate.

If that list might lead you to speculate that there is an inverse relationship between the size of the country and the volume generated by their supporters, you should probably get to a Turkey game. Nothing else in the tournament so far has compared to the noise made by their fans in Dortmund, particularly during the spectacular, rain-drenched 3-1 win against Georgia.

Walking back to Dortmund central station around 11 o’clock that night the streets were empty, the windows darkened, it felt like everyone in the town had gone to bed – everyone except the Turks, who were driving around beeping their car horns, trailing giant flags and bellowing “OOOOHHH TÜRKIYE!” The early-to-bed crowd would just have to suck that one up.

The crowd couldn’t help them against the cool proficiency of the Portuguese, who tuned out the noise and beat them 3-0. That was one of the most quietly impressive performances of the tournament so far, although most of the attention ended up focused on the stream of supplicants invading the pitch to get a picture with Ronaldo.

A list of the best performances so far would include Spain in their 1-0 win over Italy, Germany in the tone-setting 5-1 against Scotland, and Austria in the riotous 3-2 against the Netherlands.

Spain and Germany are on course to meet in a quarter-final, which is a pity for them and maybe the tournament as a whole, but good news for all the other contenders. Both sides have masterful central midfielders and exciting younger players in attack. If there is a question mark over Spain it is that one of their key players is only 16 years old.

Lamine Yamal of Spain runs with the ball whilst under pressure from Mario Mitaj of Albania. Photograph: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty

Lamine Yamal is clearly a major talent, but is it a sign of desperation on Spain’s part that he has become so integral at such a ridiculously young age? They seem unbothered by the recent examples of Pedri and Gavi, who became regulars for club and country at 17 and soon paid the price with long injury lay-offs.

Germany’s laboured performance in the 1-1 draw against Switzerland might have been a useful corrective ahead of the tougher tests of the knockouts. Their national debate focuses on the centre forward position: should it be Kai Havertz, the all-rounder who isn’t much of a striker, or Niclas Füllkrug, the striker who isn’t much of an all-rounder? Füllkrug is the popular choice but Julian Nagelsmann values the way Havertz puts himself about for the team: the Arsenal player should get at least one more chance to start.

Austria and Switzerland have enjoyed the tournament so far, with systems that make the most of their comparatively limited squads. Austria in particular look fired up, radiating the same kind of fearless intensity that carried Denmark to the semi-finals in 2021.

Austria’s opposites in this sense are the pre-tournament favourites, England, who have contributed most of the angst and melodrama. Confidence in Gareth Southgate is crumbling fast. The coach began the tournament with a midfield three that had never played together before. After deciding during the second bad performance of three that the “experiment” with Trent Alexander-Arnold had failed, Southgate’s fix was to insert “energy” in the form of Conor Gallagher – an idea which ended in ignominy for all concerned with Gallagher being subbed off at half-time in the 0-0 against Slovenia.

Meanwhile, England have re-established one of their grand summer traditions: an undroppable star striker who arrives at the tournament not fully fit. How many times have we seen this before? Lineker in 1988 and 1992, Shearer in 1998 and 2000, Owen in 2002 and 2004, Rooney in 2006 and 2010.

Now the captain and record goalscorer Harry Kane, who suffered a back injury towards the end of the season with Bayern, does not seem to be moving properly. Lineker was among those who questioned Kane’s performances; Kane retorted that critical pundits should remember they too won nothing for England.

Southgate has openly said that some of his players are lacking in the physical condition to press properly from the front, but so far he has baulked at the solution of picking someone who is fully fit instead of Kane. Still, they have found themselves in the opposite side of the draw to most of the sides they would fear: maybe Southgate still has time to stumble upon a solution.

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