Biggest Winners and Losers From Euro 2020 Group Stage

The Azzurri entered Euro 2020 as relative dark horse contenders, but Roberto Mancini’s group have since established themselves as one of the favorites.

Manuel Locatelli’s emergence has seen him draw interest from major clubs throughout Europe, while Gianluigi Donnarumma and the Italy defense finished group play as one of just two teams to not allow a single goal.

At 36 years old, Ronaldo is showing no sign of slowing down and helped Portugal advance to the knockout stage by scoring five of the team’s seven group stage goals.

In the process, Ronaldo tied Iran’s Ali Daei for most international goals of all-time with a mark of 109. It’s hard to say any player is having a better tournament than Ronaldo at this very moment.

Lukaku is enjoying his own share of success after continuing his Inter Milan form this summer with Belgium. The Red Devils topped their group with relative ease, and with Lukaku and teammate Kevin De Bruyne firing it’s going to be difficult to stop this team as the tournament progresses.

It feels like England will always receive criticism despite their form, but Southgate had his side playing much better against Czech Republic in the group stage finale, which saw the Three Lions finish group play unbeaten.

Like Italy, the Three Lions are yet to concede a goal in three matches, so if their attack can find any kind of rhythm against Germany and beyond England may have the opportunity to finally say “It’s coming home!”

The passion and hopefulness that the Danes displayed during group play was enough to unite an entire football world following the scary collapse of Christian Eriksen.

It was never going to be about the results of the matches that followed, but instead having Denmark’s players unite and play for their talisman in an effort to show that they have his back.

Despite everything stacked against them, the Danes find themselves in the last 16 and they have an opportunity to expand on what’s already been an extremely rewarding tournament.

Spain progressed to the knockout phase, but Morata’s performances through three games have been less than stellar after scoring just one goal.

La Furia Roja certainly have talent throughout their squad but it was always going to be up to Morata to carry the goal scoring load for this team given the lack of options at striker. If Morata doesn’t find some sort of form soon though, Spain won’t be competing in the competition for much longer.

At 5000-1 odds, Turkey was many people’s choices as dark horses for the Euros. They certainly didn’t play like it though after losing all three Group A matches and only scoring one goal.

Burak Yilmaz and the Turkish attack struggled to get any sort of momentum going during the group stage, but defensively Turkey was just as out of sorts despite boasting an experienced back line.

When big tournaments like the Euros roll around there’s always a few major names that are in the market for big-money moves away from their current clubs. Count Kane as one of those players, along with England teammate Sancho.

Although they’ll likely both get their moves done and settle up with new clubs for astounding monetary compensation, their play at Euro 2020 has been disappointing, or at least in Kane’s case. 

Sancho’s absence for England outside of a few garbage time minutes at the end of the Czech Republic game is a bit puzzling, and if we don’t see him throughout the rest of the tournament it’ll be a serious question that Southgate will have to answer.