With Hungary’s win over Scotland on Sunday, football fans around the country spent the last couple of days trying to figure out what results the National Team needs from the other groups to advance in the 24-team European Championship. The top four out of the six third-place finishers in the groups also make it to the round of 16, evidently, alongside the top two finishers of each group.

The week started out promising for Hungary: as we wrote earlier, Italy tied Croatia 1–1 in the last minute of extra time, which meant that Croatia finished third in Group B with just two points, ranked lower than Hungary with three points.

Consequently, the advancement could have been a done deal by the next day. All that needed to happen was for England to beat Slovenia, which they were very much favoured to do. Alas, they failed to do so, tying the Central European nation in a goalless match. This further exacerbated criticism towards long-reigning England head coach Gareth Southgate, with many claiming he cannot get the best out of the quality roster.

However, that is neither here nor there for Hungary, which still had a chance to make it out of the group stage, with the last round in Group F.

Here’s what needed to happen for Marco Rossi and his boys to make it through:

• Georgia could not beat Portugal.
• Czechia could not beat Türkiye; or if they did, they should have done it by at least three goals to make the Turkish side’s goal difference worse than Hungary’s.

Of the two, the first seemed very unlikely. Georgia only made it to Euro 2024 as a Nations League league C qualifier through playoffs. In fact, they only finished fourth out of five in their ‘regular’ qualifying group. Meanwhile, Portugal completed the qualification with a perfect record, winning 10 out of 10 (!) games. The second condition seemed a lot more risky.

Yet Georgia pulled off an amazing underdog story, beating Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal 2–0.

Truth to be told, the Portuguese benched most of their standard starting 11 for the game, given that the two victories in the first two group games guaranteed them the top place in the group. Of the players who got less playtime in the first two, more competitive group games, centre-back Antonio Silva of Benfica gave the poorest performance. He gave away an easy ball in the 2nd minute of the game, which led to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scoring the opener for Georgia. Silva also gave away the penalty in the second half, which set Georges Mikautadze up to make it 2–0. Mikautadze is now the top scorer of the tournament with three goals. Giorgi Mamardashvili of Valencia in Georgia’s goal also put on yet another great performance, and kept a clean sheet.

Hungary thus failed to advance from the group in Euro 2024.

This may be somewhat of a disappointment. However, Hungary has already achieved a historic feat by qualifying for a third consecutive European Championship. Also, Kevin Csoboth’s last-minute winner against Scotland was a cathartic experience for millions of football fans across the country.

What’s Next at Euro 2024?

The round of 16 draw for Euro 2024 is now complete. Here's the list of match-ups:

• Switzerland vs Italy (29 June)
• Germany vs Denmark (29 June)
• England vs Slovakia (30 June)
• Spain vs Georgia (30 June)
• France vs Belgium (1 July)
• Portugal vs Slovenia (1 July)
• Romania vs Netherlands (2 July)
• Austria vs Türkiye (2 July)

Read next: