From Georgian joy and Ralf Rangnick's revenge to atrocious England and Cristiano Ronaldo's tantrums: Winners & losers of the Euro 2024 group stage

Talk about a man for the big occasion! Xherdan Shaqiri's sublime, first-time strike against Scotland means he is the only player to score at the last three European Championships and the last three World Cups combined.

Shaqiri was asked after his sensational equaliser if it was the best goal of his career. "It was a really beautiful goal but I've scored many beautiful goals before, so it’s difficult to choose if it’s the best one," he said, smiling. And he's right too: the 32-year-old winger has now netted 10 times at major international tournaments - that's more than Patrick Kluivert (eight), Wayne Rooney (seven), Raul and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (six).

It's high time more respect was put on Shaqiri's name - and that lovely left foot.

It's impossible not to feel sorry for the Tartan Army. The best fans at the tournament had to follow the worst team. Indeed, 'Flower of Scotland' was the highlight of every game featuring Steve Clarke's dreadfully negative team that managed just 17 shots in total (the joint-fewest in the history of the group stage).

Not even in their final fixture against a desperately underwhelming Hungary - which they had to win to have any chance of reaching the last 16 of a major international tournament for the first time ever - did the Scots start attacking until 10 minutes to go. Worse still, for the second time in three games, they failed to even attempt a shot in the first half. To top it all off, Clarke launched a pathetic and offensive attack on the Argentine referee after the game.

Sadly, while Germany is a much poorer place without the Scotland fans, the tournament is all the richer for their national team's early exit.

Could Spain have scored more goals in the group stage? Absolutely. Such was their supremacy against Italy, it was borderline negligent that they only managed to beat the Azzurri thanks to a desperately fortuitous Riccardo Calafiori own goal. They may yet be punished for such profligacy in the knockout stage.

At the end of the day, though, there's been no more impressive team in Germany. Some of their football has been scintillating, and it's just a joy to watch both Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams in full flight.

Luis de la Fuente was also able to make 10 changes for his side's final group game, with top spot in Group B having already been wrapped up after just two matchdays, and their second string look stronger than most nations' first teams.

La Roja really could not be in better shape, mentally or physically, going into the last 16.

In the increasingly tribal and jingoistic world of football, it's hard to find players that are universally loved. Luka Modric is one such player.

After Croatia had been effectively eliminated by a last-gasp equaliser from Italy in Monday's Group B clash in Leipzig, an Italian journalist decided against asking Modric a question. He instead thanked him for everything he had contributed to the beautiful game over the years and begged him never to retire.

Modric said he'd have to hang up his boots eventually; he just wasn't sure when. But it's possible Leipzig was the last we'll see of Modric in the international arena. If it is, it was a terribly sad end. The image of a disconsolate Modric holding aloft the Player of the Match award was almost haunting. But the tribute which followed in his post-match presser rather poignantly illustrated why Modric will be so sorely missed by every true football fan across the globe.

After the last European Championship, we wondered if we'd ever see Christian Eriksen on a football pitch ever again. Three years on, the midfielder has been one of the players of the group stage, winning Player of the Match in two of his three appearances, against Slovenia and Serbia. In between, he ran the show in Denmark's impressive 1-1 draw with England.

"This time at the Euros, my story is very different to last time," he said on Tuesday, referring with characteristic understatement to the cardiac arrest he suffered during his country's clash with Finland in Copenhagen on June 12, 2021. "Luckily, it's been a lot of games since it happened but I am just happy to be playing."

It's also been a joy to watch him in action. No player has created more chances at the Euros so far (13), no player has delivered more successful crosses (10) and no player has scored a goal so widely celebrated as Eriksen's effort against Slovenia on matchday one.

Denmark made it all the way to the semi-finals without him three years ago; who knows how far they could go with Eriksen back in the team - and back at his best - in Germany?

England won their group. The draw has also opened up beautifully for them (as it always seems to do) - and yet nobody in their right mind is now backing Gareth Southgate's dreadfully dull side to go on and win the trophy.

England have arguably only played well for about 20 minutes across three games. For the most part, they've been atrocious, borderline unwatchable, in fact. In a way, it's actually impressive that Southgate has managed to get a squad packed with so many great players performing so poorly but, as we saw after the Slovenia draw, there's a very real risk of this campaign turning toxic.

England's fans are fickle at the best of times. Right now, even their most restrained supporters are getting seriously annoyed by the prospect of not just exiting the tournament - but doing so while playing horribly feeble football.

Of course, all it takes is a single burst of brilliance to spark a team into life and England most certainly do not lack game-changers. But if the Three Lions do not improve, starting in this weekend's last-16 tie against Slovakia, they'll be heading home far earlier than anyone expected. The backlash would undoubtedly be as bitter as anything we've seen since David Beckham was vilified by the national press after the 1998 World Cup.

France's campaign isn't going according to plan at all, with Les Bleus having ended up on the wrong side of the draw after drawing two of their group games in distinctly underwhelming fashion. However, while Didier Deschamps' selections are coming under increasing scrutiny, his decision to recall N'Golo Kante has already proven a masterstroke.

The midfielder hadn't played for his country for two years before being surprisingly named in France's squad for Euro 2024 and Deschamps had to explain precisely why he was willing to put his faith in an injury-prone player now plying his trade in Saudi Arabia.

The coach insisted that Kante had "regained all of his physical capabilities", and he's been proven 100 percent correct. The 33-year-old has been Les Bleus' best player in Germany, having collected two Player of the Match awards already!

"This guy is not even a coach," Cristiano Ronaldo infamously said of Ralf Rangnick. "All the coaches that I had in my career, I call them boss because if they assume the job we have to call them in that way. But deep inside me, I never saw him as the boss."

Perhaps if Ronaldo and his former team-mates at Old Trafford had treated the German with a little more respect, Manchester United might not be in such an awful state right now.

Rangnick's redemption has been one of the stories of Euro 2024 so far. Not only is he a coach, he's a damn fine one, as his fantastic Austria side have proven by topping the toughest group in the competition - and doing so with a wonderfully positive and dynamic brand of football.

We did tag them as 'dark horses' before the tournament began, but not for a second did we think that they'd actually finish ahead of France, particularly after their opening-round loss to Les Bleus, so enormous credit must go to Rangnick and his charges for the way in which they reacted to that defeat.

If they can continue playing with the same kind of energy that allows them to press teams into submission, Rangnick's Austria have every chance of reaching the European Championship quarter-finals for the first time in the country's history.

Kevin De Bruyne's reaction on Wednesday said it all. After slipping Romelu Lukaku in on goal with a typically precise pass, the attacking midfielder couldn't hide his frustration after seeing the striker fail dismally to get any power at all on his shot.

Lukaku is obviously not Belgium's only problem. The fans even booed De Bruyne when he was awarded the Player of the Match award after the dour draw with Ukraine that saw the Red Devils progress to the last 16 in second place in Group E - even though he's one of the few players in the squad performing anywhere close to his best level.

However, Lukaku's finishing is becoming a major issue, whether Domenico Tedesco wants to publicly admit it or not. Some close offside calls may have gone against the big No.9, but he's yet to score and has missed twice as many chances (six) as any other player in Germany.

Maybe he'll step up to the mark against France, but if history has taught us anything when it comes to Lukaku, the bigger game, the worse he performs.

The top scorer at Euro 2024 so far? The much feared own goal - and by some margin!

Georges Mikautadze is the only player to have scored three times in the group stage, with Golden Boot favourites Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane both on target only once, and Cristiano Ronaldo still waiting to get off the mark.

However, we've already seen seven own goals to date - and of varying degrees of comic quality. Riccardo Calafiori, for example, could do little about the deflected cross that he unintentionally diverted into his own net, but Samet Akaydin's own goal against Portugal was pure farce, with the defender involved in a hilarious mix-up with goalkeeper Altay Bayindir.

The bottom line is that the all-time record of 11 OGs at a single European Championship is now under serious threat.

On the plus side, though, we also saw 14 goals scored from outside the box during the group stage - which means that we could also see the Euro 2020 tally of 19 surpassed before the quarter-finals.

What does it all mean? It's a little hard to say at this early stage - but what we do know is that it's made for some incredible drama. Long may the chaos continue!

Ukraine's elimination was utterly heartbreaking. "It's unprecedented that a team with four points misses out on the knockout stage," an understandably emotional Oleksandr Tymchyk told UEFA. "We gave our all for our country. But we let them down."

Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course. Ukraine had done their war-ravaged country proud with their performances against both Belgium and Slovakia. Unfortunately, though, they were punished for one poor performance, against Romania on matchday one.

But as manager Serhiy Rebrov pointed out, "In the last two games, we showed the character of our nation. This is life, you make some mistakes, but then it’s important how you react. Of course, everyone is unhappy with the result, but there are no question marks over the players. We have a very young national team, and they are optimistic about the future."

Nobody gave Georgia any real hope of reaching the knockout stage at Euro 2024. There were even understandable doubts over whether the tournament debutants would even even pick up a point in Group F.

However, after spirited displays against both Turkey and the Czech Republic, Georgia stunned the world by upsetting Portugal in Gelsenkirchen to set up a last-16 showdown with Spain. They'll be underdogs again against the best team we've seen in Germany so far, but that won't bother them in the slightest.

In Giorgi Mamardashvili, they have a fine goalkeeper in good form, Georges Mikautadze is leading the race for the Golden Boot, while Khvicha Kvaratskhelia proved against Portugal that he is capable of tearing teams to shreds with his blistering pace and devastating dribbling skills.

Before the tournament began, Georgia looked like its weakest team. As it turns out, they're actually one of the best to watch.

How Roberto Martinez managed Cristiano Ronaldo's game time was always going to have a major bearing on Portugal's hopes of victory in Germany - and he's making a right mess of it. There was absolutely no way Ronaldo, at 39 years of age, should have started for the third consecutive game, against Georgia.

It was a desperate bid to allow the captain to finally get off the mark in Germany, but the gamble backfired badly, with Ronaldo once again drawing a blank, meaning he's failed to score in the group stage of a major international tournament for the first time in his long and illustrious career.

His frustration was obvious throughout the game - and when he was belatedly taken off with 25 minutes to go. Make no mistake about it: Martinez has made a major error here. He's made himself look weak by refusing to rotate Ronaldo and he's done nothing but create further debate over whether the misfiring forward really deserves to start up front for Portugal, who have Diogo Jota and Goncalo Ramos waiting patiently in reserve.

Ronaldo's 2022 World Cup campaign ended in bitterness and acrimony. There's now a very real risk his Euros could go the same way.

Whether you're cheering on Germany or not, there's no denying that it's always better when the host nation does well at an international tournament. Of course, the atmosphere at Euro 2024 was always going to be pretty special, given Germany has a fantastic football culture and is easily accessible to most countries across Europe.

However, Die Mannschaft's revival under Julian Nagelsmann has undoubtedly added to the excitement and buzz surrounding the entire event. It's also helped that they've got some thrilling talents, with Jamal Musiala undoubtedly the pick of the bunch.

Germany may have been given a bit of a reality check by an impressive Switzerland side in their final group game but if they can get past Denmark in the last 16, there's every chance that a last-eight encounter with Spain will capture the imagination of the public in much the same way as that epic World Cup semi-final showdown with Italy all the way back in 2006.