Euro 2024: the quarters, part two; Germany pull an England and lose to the first decent team they play

At the end of their first game against Scotland, Germany had cause for optimism. Five games on, the hosts have been eliminated from the competition altogether.

Recent experience may have tempered expectations somewhat, but it still wasn’t meant to end this way. Not in the quarter-finals. Not with a minute left of extra-time. Germany are out of the European Championships and it must feel like another chapter in a recurring nightmare.

In the cold light of this particular day, mitigation doesn’t count for very much. It’s true to say that they’ve got an excellent and progressive coach in the form of Julian Nagelsmann. It’s equally fair to say that they were one of the best teams in the group stage and that their second win against Denmark was comfortable. It’s equally reasonable to suggest that Spain are an excellent team and there should be no disgrace in losing to them.

None of that will matter right now. The narrative seemed stacked in one direction. Florian Wirtz’s 89th minute equaliser felt like it should have been the turning of a page at the end of a particularly dismal chapter in the history of the men’s national team in this country, a moment of a renew for a team that has now been off its game for the best part of a decade.

But with push heading towards shove and a penalty shootout starting to loom large on the horizon, the closing minutes had a nasty sting in the tail, a beautiful cross from the left from Dani Olmo headed in by Mikel Moreno to win the game for Spain. A titanic battle suitable for these two great nations of the European game was snatched from the hosts at the very last.

It had been a tempestuous and exhausting 119 minutes of football, in which Germany had matched Spain all the way. Olmo’s goal six minutes into the second half felt like a thin, fragile dividing line between the two best teams in the tournament, only for Wirtz’s late equaliser to open up a new narrative arc for them to follow. Perhaps this time the redemption song would be heard.

But no. Not this time. And now the hosts are out in the quarter-finals. Ten years on from their last World Cup win, they don’t seem much closer to repeating anything like that. And just as happened the last time they hosted one of these in 2006, it was a late, late goal scored by an old rival that ended up torpedoing them.

Their tournament had started with cautious optimism. There wasn’t much to go on since their disastrous 2022 World Cup, but they’d had home and away friendly wins against France, and that felt as though it should count for something. And in Julian Nagelsmann they had a fresh young coach who’d been attracting the interest of some of Europe’s bigger clubs.

It wasn’t perfect. There still wasn’t the imperiousness that those of us raised between the 1970s and 2000s had come to expect from a Germany national football team. But they looked competitive, and when they turned Scotland over in their opening match it felt as though the pre-tournament optimism hadn’t been in vain.

There had been questions. Scotland and Hungary, their first two group opponents, were among the worst teams in the entire tournament, and their third game ended in a fairly lacklustre draw against Switzerland. In the second round, they took a while to get going against another pretty average team, this time in the form of Denmark. It’s reasonable to say that they came close to ‘pulling an England’ - they lost, the first time they played a decent team.

There are many mitigations, most of which can be met by saying, “Well yeah, but this is Germany”. Spain are an excellent team, one of the very best in the tournament. Well yeah, but this is Germany. The handball not given against Marc Cucurella in extra-time might on another not day have been given. Well yeah, but this is Germany. They were in the difficult half of the draw. Well yeah, but this is Germany.

When you’re a country of 85 million people, an economic powerhouse and a multiple-time previous winner of exactly this sort of competition, there really aren’t any excuses that anyone will listen to for that long. When things are going well, that historical weight is something you can use to steamroller your way past opponents, but when things aren’t going so well it starts to feel more like a burden.

Their record as a host nation of these tournaments is actually not so great. They’ve hosted the Euros twice and the World Cup once. They won the World Cup in 1974 and reached the semi-finals in 2006 before losing to Italy, but in 1988 they were knocked out of the competition in the semi-finals and this time around they couldn’t get past the quarters. Quite where Germany go from here is anybody’s guess. Spain, meanwhile, move on to the semi-finals.