After 36 matches, the 2024 UEFA European Football Championships across Germany is now moving onto the knockout stage beginning with the Round of 16 this weekend. We look back at the final group stage game in Group F between Czech Republic v Turkey as the first half was pretty quiet despite some Czech attacking dominance earlier on.The the Turkish did put one up ahead in the 51st minute by No.10 Hakan Calhaboglu before Czech finally found a way to level the scoreboard off Tomas Soucek sometime later where the game was almost bound to finish with a draw. But at the end of the day however, it was substitute striker Cenk Tosun who saved the day with the win that broke the Czech hearts in the end 2-1 for Turkey.
So Turkey finished 2nd behind Portugal on equal six points but Portugal conceded the least goals of 3 compared to Turkey’s five. They are off to the Round of 16 nonetheless going into next Wednesday morning v Austria, if Turkey win they will either take on Switzerland or defending champs Italy in the last eight. Yeah, it was disappointing for the Czech to bow out without any wins – even though they were right in it every time they found the equaliser until they just couldn’t the job done other than the odd draw last week v Georgia. Leaving it so late isn’t the way to make the opposition hard to score – despite a good start to press on the counter-attack with hit and misses here and there as they finished last in Group F. Not even the poor discipline isn’t a good way to finish off early either with two red cards to Antonin Barak (20th min) & Tomas Chory (98th min).
Meanwhile, Turkey are through to the knockout stages for the first time in 16 years when they had a really good run last time up until the semi-finals by Germany 3-2. They really dominated the 2nd half where the Turkish found the net two times off the back of the Czech being tired who really want to hold this out without them picking up the win. Well, they’ve did it and what’s next for them is to try and go all in v Austria who topped Group D over France. If they can do that from start to finish, then Turkey will be in a good position to hopefully repeat their heroics past the QF by going one better if they do from Euro 2008.
