By James Cormack Euro 2024 kicked off with a bang as the first round of group stage fixtures brought about unrelenting excitement. However, as the group stages wore on, the drawbacks of a 24-team tournament started to manifest. With teams well aware that a three or four-point haul would be enough to advance, dreary possession vs compact mid/low-blocks became a recurring theme. Inferior nations were, understandably, content with draws, and unbalanced pre-tournament favourites have struggled, for the most part, to penetrate the resistance. There have been some belting contests in Germany this su…