Stuttering Seleção secure Copa America quarter-finals

In the blink of an eye, the round of 16 of Euro 2024 will be over after this phase of the competition concluded on Tuesday.

The Netherlands are in the quarter-finals after producing perhaps their best performance in Germany, beating Group E winners Romania with ease.

Turkey beat Group D winners Austria in Leipzig and will face Ronald Koeman’s team in the round of 16. The winner could play England in the semi-finals.

After another day full of action and knockout football, we dive deeper into the best statistics of the day, based on Opta figures.

Romania 0-3 Netherlands: Malen, Gakpo and Simons shine for the Dutch national team

The Netherlands beat Romania 3-0 with ease, freeing them from the demons of previous years by qualifying for a knockout match at the European Championship for the first time since beating Sweden on penalties in 2004.

Excluding shoot-out victories, this convincing victory in Munich – inspired by Cody Gakpo and Donyell Malen – was the Netherlands’ first win in the knockout stages of the European Championship since a 6-1 victory over Yugoslavia in 2000.

Gakpo scored three goals at the 2022 World Cup and has three so far at the tournament after his fine first-half performances. He is only the third Dutchman to score 3+ goals at two different major tournaments, joining Johnny Rep (1974 and 1978 World Cups) and Dennis Bergkamp (1992 Euro, 1994 and 1998 World Cups).

In fact, in those last two major international tournaments, only France’s Kylian Mbappe (nine goals in ten games) could surpass Gakpo’s six goals in nine European appearances.

The Liverpool player also played a key role in the Netherlands’ second goal, setting up Malen for 2-0, who then scored again in the closing stages to become the first player to score twice in a single match at Euro 2024.

Malen is also the first substitute to score twice at the European Championship since Savo Milosevic in 2000 for Yugoslavia against Slovenia. However, the role of these two attackers should not be at the expense of the merit of Xavi Simons.

Simons set up Gakpo’s opening goal and also provided an assist against Austria in Group D. He is the youngest player (21 years and 72 days) to provide an assist in two consecutive European Championship appearances since Switzerland’s Eren Derdiyok at the 2008 European Championship (20 years and 3 days).

That trio played a key role as the Netherlands reached the quarter-finals of two major tournaments for the first time since the 2008 European Championship and the 2010 World Cup.

In stark contrast, Romania have now won just two of their 20 matches at the Euros (G6 V12). Their win percentage of 10% is the lowest of any team that has played more than 10 matches in the competition.

Austria 1-2 Turkey: Record-breaking Demiral secures quarter-final spot

Merih Demiral is Turkey’s star player after his two goals, including a record-breaking opener, led his side to a 2-1 win over Austria and reach the last eight of the European Championship for the third time.

Demiral needed just 57 seconds to open the scoring, the fastest goal in the history of the European Championship knockout and the second fastest ever in the entire competition, helping the Crescent Stars set a new world record.

Turkey now boasts the fastest knockout goal at the European Championship and FIFA’s premier event (since records began in 1966). Hakan Sukur also scored after 11 seconds against South Korea at the 2002 World Cup.

Demiral wasn’t done yet, however, and scored again after the break, becoming the first defender to score twice in a major tournament match since John Stones for England against Panama at the 2018 World Cup.

He is also the first player in his position to score two goals in a knockout match since France’s Lilian Thuram against Croatia in the 1998 World Cup semi-final.

Ralf Rangnick’s team halved the deficit thanks to Michael Gregoritsch, who scored four goals in two games against Turkey. His other twelve goals for his country came against twelve different opponents.

That goal wasn’t enough for Austria, but they did pull off a bizarre feat: it was the first match (since 1980) at the European Championship in which no fewer than three goals were scored from set pieces.

Austria will look back with regret at two consecutive eliminations in the round of 16 of the European Championship, and the country also collected the most expected goals (2.7) for a team that did not make it through the knockout stages of the European Championship since France against Switzerland in the round of 16 of Euro 2020 (3.1).

Turkey, on the other hand, are looking to the future, as they became the second team in the competition’s history to field two teenagers (Kenan Yildiz and Arda Guler) in the starting line-up for a knockout match, after Hungary in 1964 against Denmark.