France Advances to Euro 2024 Semis After Dramatic Penalty Shootout Against Portugal

Posted : 06 July 2024

The match provided a promising start but never progressed beyond a tentative stage, ultimately leading to Deschamps' team advancing to the semi-finals. Despite this, they failed to impress. On the other side, Portugal relied heavily on Ronaldo, only to realize the hard way that it's not the same anymore.

"Didier Deschamps is a goal-oriented coach. He is not a league coach; he is a tournament coach," Claude Tardy, a waiter in a Berlin café, told me a day before France's victory over Portugal in the Euro quarterfinals via a 3:5 penalty shootout after a goalless 120 minutes. "The loss to Argentina in the World Cup final in Qatar was traumatic for him. That wasn't his football. His football is not about stealing goals. Scoring a hat-trick and losing, that's not him."

"And I think that's how he approached this tournament. Fans and the media might criticize him for wasting France's golden generation in attack, and 'L'Equipe' might call his team 'Bunker Blue,' but I tell you, he doesn't care. He's here to win. He didn't come to Germany to be beautiful. And no one forgets the outcome," Tardy added.

On my way to the stands, I met a Portuguese fan among the thousands who had flocked to the stadium in Hamburg, providing a pulsating display of support. "We put all our hopes on Ronaldo's farewell show," he told me. "Now, it's hard to criticize Cristiano, but what's left of him in this tournament are mostly hand gestures of disappointment and tears when his teammates don't deliver the ball to him. It's a volcano of emotions. But if we advance, it's worth it. We can't say anything bad about Cristiano. We owe him. It's Cristiano."

It turned out to be a strange night of football. In the first match between Spain and Germany, both teams gave everything on the pitch in Stuttgart and earned their places in the semi-finals. In contrast, the second game featured two passive and cynical teams, with neither reaching the same intensity. The first game saw 16 yellow cards, including one red, while the second game had no cards until the 80th minute.

In the 86th minute, Portugal received a free kick just outside the box, slightly to the right. Even a young Ronaldo would have struggled from this angle. Three French players formed a wall in front of him, and the goalkeeper closed the corner. Ronaldo performed his usual pre-kick routine but ended up hitting the wall. Few things in sports are sadder than a superstar who no longer understands his current limitations. Ronaldo, who built his legacy on defying the odds, now struggles to accept his new reality. Despite their efforts, France won on penalties without their goalkeeper stopping a single kick, advancing once more without scoring a goal. Football, in the end, lost.

France Advances to Euro 2024 Semis After Dramatic Penalty Shootout Against Portugal

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