Upsets

Football's greatest tournament shocks

When the outsiders forgot to read the script

Every tournament arrives with a list of favourites and a rough sense of how it should end. The best ones tear that list up by the second week. Here are the upsets that still don't feel real, and the odd thing they share.

Denmark, Euro 1992: the team on holiday

Denmark did not qualify for Euro 1992. They finished second in their group and went home. Then Yugoslavia were disqualified as the country came apart, and with barely a fortnight's notice the Danes were handed the empty seat. The story goes that players were recalled from their summer breaks; whether or not every detail is true, the spirit of it certainly was. Nobody expected anything.

They beat France, knocked out the Netherlands on penalties with Peter Schmeichel in goal, and then dismantled world champions Germany 2-0 in the final. A squad that had mentally clocked off for the summer won a European Championship. It remains the purest fairy tale the competition has produced.

Greece were 80-1 to win Euro 2004. They beat the hosts twice.

Greece, Euro 2004: the great heist

If Denmark was a fairy tale, Greece 2004 was a robbery carried out in broad daylight. Otto Rehhagel's side were priced at 80-1 and played a brand of football that nobody enjoyed except the people doing it. They beat hosts Portugal in the opening match, then beat them again in the final, with Angelos Charisteas heading the only goal. In between they knocked out holders France and dark horses the Czech Republic, each by a single goal, each time with the same suffocating patience.

It was not pretty and it was not lucky. It was a plan, executed for a month without a single lapse, by a team that decided the way to beat better players was to never, ever give them space.

The pattern nobody wants to admit

Look closely and the great shocks share a spine. None of them out-passed the favourites. Denmark defended and countered. Greece defended and set-pieced. Even the club version of the story, when unfancied sides ambush giants, tends to run the same way: keep it tight, take the one chance, hang on.

The lesson tournaments keep teaching is that talent decides most games and organisation decides the strange ones. A squad that agrees on exactly what it is, and refuses to be talked out of it, can walk past teams stuffed with better individuals. It does not happen often. When it does, we remember it for thirty years.

Why we love them anyway

Favourites winning is satisfying, like a sum that adds up. Outsiders winning is something else. It suggests the game is not quite as sorted as the odds pretend, that a fortnight of belief and a back four who won't be moved can still upend everything. That is worth an 80-1 flutter, and it is certainly worth remembering.

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