An ode to Euro 2020’s Group of Death; Thank you for finally making our dreams come true

A global pandemic. A world in disarray. People stuffed into their houses for an absurd amount of time without any human contact apart from their family. For a group of mammals labelled as the “social generation” to do that was tough and beyond what anyone imagined. It’s only then so many realised that social media goes only so far, it’s only then people realised just how much human contact they crave, it’s only then people realised how fragile life truly is.

England did the same for less than a month before they were forced to take a dramatic U-turn with Germany and France following their route for once. And suddenly while we all had football to watch and enjoy, it wasn’t the same. Fake fans hurt the game and while hearing the absurd amount of how much players talk/communicate on the field was fun, it just wasn’t the same. This is why when the Euro 2020 groups were announced, the world never reacted even though nothing has changed since then.

And yet, the hype was never really there because as we’ve historically seen, Group of Deaths have never ever lived up to their potential. It all started when a Mexican journalist dubbed a 1970 World Cup group containing reigning champs England, eventual winners Brazil, 1962 finalists Czechoslovakia and Romania, as a group of death. It disappointed with Romania and Czechoslovakia finishing third and fourth with 2 and 0 points respectively. 

Denmark annihilated their opposition, West Germany won the one game and Uruguay finished third with Scotland the only side not to progress. But the point remains, even with the Danish playing marvellous football and shocking Uruguay with a 6-1 defeat, the world still didn’t remain completely satisfied. And who can blame them? Because since then any group with hopes of a genuine giant-killing possibility has been labelled “Grupo de la Muerte” and nothing has ever lived up to the hype.

Partly because an expansion to the World Cup from 24 to 32 teams has rarely seen a legitimate challenger thrown into the mix. Things didn’t change in either the 2010 World Cup or the 2014 World Cup even if many expected reigning champions, Spain to get knocked out. While nobody expected it to be quite so dramatic with losses to Chile and the Netherlands, Australia still disappointed and thus let the entire group down.

But then turned up Euro 2020 and Group F with Germany, Hungary, France and Portugal.

A group destined to do bad things even if they had the reigning world champs, the reigning European Championship champs and the former World champs alongside Hungary placed in one group.  Fortune, history and just basic common sense told us that this would disappoint again, that either France or Portugal would let us down and get humiliated but still and we had hope. Because after the year the world had just had, they needed one thing to go its way.

Even if that one thing was something as meaningless as an exciting Group of Death for once in tournament history. And not exciting where the little side, in this case, Hungary, puts up a fight but gets thrashed either way. But something where the excitement, the enthralling nature of it all and the fact that a massive massive massive team could get eliminated transformed the game of football for everyone and adds something more to the Euro 2020. But common sense told us otherwise.

Hungary took the lead first, which would mean Germany would be eliminated as it stood, then Portugal took the lead, and France dropped to second. Then France equalised to push them back up to the top of the group with Portugal in second and then scored again to push Portugal into third place based on H2H.  Then Portugal scored to push them back up to second, Germany scored to push them into contention but Hungary took the lead….right from kick-off. But in the end, it simply wasn’t to be.

Germany equalised, Portugal finished third with France and Germany finishing first and second respectively. Hungary finished fourth but the Grupo de la Muerte had finally lived up to its title. Entertaining and exciting with off the seat action combined with a scary notion that one of Germany or Portugal wouldn’t make it.  And the kicker was, it happened in front of more than 70,000 combined fans in Budapest and in Munich.