Turkey were supposed to be Euro 2020’s dark horses. Maybe everyone whose predictions looked hideously bad when they crashed out with no points and a lone goal merely got the wrong tournament. Three years later they are quarter-finalists, with a plausible route to the final.
If Austria were perhaps the best side of the group stages, Spain apart, they were swept out of Euro 2024 by Vincenzo Montella’s team, subjected to an assault on the eardrums from Turkey’s fervent support and caving in at corners. If a player from the Saudi Pro-League was going to score twice in a Euro 2024 game, few had thought it would be Merih Demiral. The centre-back succeeded where Cristiano Ronaldo failed .
In a sense, he did the Thuram double; like Lilian Thuram in 1998, an irregular scorer mustered a potentially career-defining brace. Demiral had two goals in 47 caps. He doubled that tally inside an hour of his 48th.
In the process, he rendered himself a record-breaker. Turkey took Austria’s superpower and appropriated it. Ralf Rangnick’s team were the fast starters, the side who usually scored in the first 10 minutes.
Turkey scored in the first one, Demiral’s 58-second strike the quickest ever in the knockout stages of the European Championship and, coincidentally, the earliest Austria had conceded since a 1965 trip to Leipzig. It was a horrible goal to concede. That both of Demiral’s double came from corners was still more damning, even if Austria’s response suggested neither side .
