Goalkeeper Diogo Costa saved all three penalties as Portugal won 3-0 in a shootout against a brave Slovenia side who had held them to a 0-0 draw after Cristiano Ronaldo’s extra-time miss from the spot in a dramatic Euro 2024 last-16 clash on Monday.
Portugal had the lion’s share of the chances but also their brilliant goalkeeper to thank for a one-on-one save from Slovenia striker Benjamin Sesko as they stumbled into a quarter-final meeting with France in Hamburg on Friday.
Costa also saved from Josip Ilicic, Jure Balkovec and Benjamin Verbic in the shootout – the first keeper to save three penalties in a Euros shootout – to send his side through despite a team performance that lacked spark for the most part.
“This is probably the best game of my life,” Costa said. “I focused on doing what I had to do. I went with my gut feeling. Of course we had analysed the penalty takers, but players change how they shoot. I’m very happy and very excited to have helped the team.”
Ronaldo in particular will come under the spotlight as he wasted several opportunities to go with a penalty miss in extra-time that left him in a flood of tears and needing to be consoled by team mates.
“Even the strongest people have their (bad) days. I was at rock bottom … when the team needed me the most,” Ronaldo said in a post-match interview before bursting into tears again.
“Sadness at the start is joy at the end. That’s what football is. Moments, inexplicable moments,” he said.
“I feel sad and happy at the same time. But the important thing is to enjoy it. The team did an extraordinary job.
“We fought right to the end and if you look at it, if you analyse the game, I think we deserved it because we had more authority.”
Portugal were awarded the penalty late in the first half of extra time when Diogo Jota’s storming run into the box was illegally stopped by defender Vanja Drkusic, who had already been booked and was lucky not to receive a second yellow card.
They have a reliable penalty taker in their team in Bruno Fernandes but captain Ronaldo elected to take it and his effort was superbly saved to his left by Slovenia’s Jan Oblak, who pushed the ball onto the post.
Ronaldo, aiming to become the oldest scorer in Euros history at 39, had looked out of sorts all through the match, missing several headed chances.
He also insisted on taking all four free-kicks Portugal were awarded in shooting range, with none of them particularly threatening for Oblak.
Slovenia defended superbly and every time they had a scrap of possession they sent the ball long to forwards Andraz Sporar and Sesko to try and make something of it.
It was a ploy that worked well and Sesko had two one-on-one opportunities in the game, both from Pepe mistakes.
His first was scuffed wide and the second, some seven minutes from the end of extra time, was well saved by Costa.
That miss will no doubt haunt him and when it came to the pressure of the shootout Slovenia wilted in the face of excellent goalkeeping, much to the relief of Ronaldo, who to his credit scored the first penalty for Portugal.
Slovenia go home having played out four draws in Germany, but having qualified for the knockout rounds of a major tournament for the first time in their history.
“Unfortunately, it did not work out for us. I’m lost for words, the atmosphere here is amazing and that’s what makes it that much more difficult,” Oblak said.
“There’s nothing more to add. You see what happened in extra time, we had the opportunity to score, but we were probably missing a bit of luck.”
An 85th-minute deflected shot by Randal Kolo Muani, listed as a Jan Vertonghen own goal, gave France a nervy 1-0 win over a disappointing Belgium on Monday and sent them into the quarter-finals despite another poor show by their misfiring forwards.
France made most of the running in a cagey game but were reckless with their finishing, until a nice combination of passes, finished off by N’Golo Kante, finally created space for substitute Kolo Muani to turn and bundle a mishit shot in off the leg of Vertonghen and leave goalkeeper Koen Casteels wrong-footed.
France will now meet the winner of Monday’s match between Portugal and Slovenia in the quarter-finals in Hamburg on Friday.
It was a fittingly scruffy decider for an underwhelming game and means that France still have yet to score in open play at the tournament, recording two own goals and a Kylian Mbappe penalty across their four games.
Various combinations have been tried up front, while midfielders and defenders also caught the bug on Monday with some wild attempts, but coach Didier Deschamps, unsurprisingly, preferred to focus on the positives.
“We’ve always got the capacity to score more. It’s been like this for us since the start of the Euros but it doesn’t mean we can’t score. We don’t want this to be a psychological barrier,” he said.
Seeking to become the first man to win the World Cup and European Championship both as player and coach, Deschamps knows better than most that it’s not how you play, but how far you go that matters when it comes to tournaments.
“We did a lot of good things. We have to savour it. We’re in the quarter finals, they’re going home,” he said. “It’s a good habit.”
Belgium, their golden generation long turned back into base metal, limp out early of yet another tournament and can have no complaints after showing a shocking lack of ambition for a team with so much talent.
It was a meeting between officially the second (France) and third (Belgium) best teams in the world, but after both edged into the knockout stage managing only two goals apiece from their three games, both looked extremely cautious in attack for most of it.
Belgium clearly had a plan to take any speed out of the game, playing at less than walking pace at times, with Kevin de Bruyne often operating just in front of his back four.
The only decent chance of the first half came for France after 34 minutes when Jules Kounde whipped in a curling cross that recalled striker Marcus Thuram headed wide.
Aurelien Tchouameni forced Koen Casteels into his first save of the day soon after the break, while ever-lively Mbappe miskicked a decent chance as France began to put some passes together.
A rare Belgian thrust was cut short by a brilliant Theo Hernandez tackle just as Yannick Carrasco was about to pull the trigger and Romelu Lukaku and De Bruyne then brought good saves from Mike Maignan.
France were in the ascendancy but the poor finishing that has dogged their campaign continued with William Saliba and Mbappe both blazing wildly over before Kolo Muani’s decisive intervention.
“We’re enjoying this, we pushed hard, we had a lot of attempts but we were missing the target,” said Kolo Muani, who was inches away from national hero status in the 2022 World Cup final until Argentine keeper Emi Martinez got a toe to what would have been his winning goal.
“I got lucky (on the goal), the coach told me to bring my energy, to bring danger with my speed.”
For Belgium, another dispiritingly tame exit adds to their appalling record in the European championship since losing in the final in 1980.
They went out at the quarter-final stage in the last two, having not even qualified for six of the previous seven – failing to get out of the group stage when they were involved as joint hosts in 2000.
“We had chances, not so many. Then they score and there isn’t enough time to react,” said De Bruyne.
“We were defending pretty well but then there’s a deflection. It’s a shame but that’s football.”