Al Ahli's Demiral is comeback king after powering Turkey into Euro 2024 quarter-final

These European Championships will not quickly forget Merih Demiral. He was the standout player from what was the standout match in a compelling tournament that will enter its concluding phase on Friday, a Euros apparently very ready to crown an outsider as champion.

Demiral will not easily forget his previous experience of this tournament, either. One aspect of the exhilaration he experienced on a raucous, thrilling Tuesday night in Leipzig, when his Turkey eliminated Austria to book their place in Saturday’s quarter-final against the Netherlands, was of vindication.

How he chose then to celebrate will keep him in the headlines until well after the Berlin final.

Three years ago, on the opening night of Euro 2020, Demiral made as bad a start to a major competition as imaginable.

Turkey were playing Italy in the first fixture of the tournament – a showpiece delayed for a year because of the Covid 19 pandemic – and Demiral scored the tournament’s first goal. Unfortunately, it was an own goal. Worse still, the tall central defender was a Juventus player at the time. Cruel taunts deemed him “Italy’s secret weapon”.

Turkey went out of Euro 2020 at the group stage. Italy went on to lift the trophy. Fast forward to the next edition and the Italians are already home, lacklustre almost throughout and knocked out by Switzerland in the last 16. Turkey? They march on.

Drawing on vibrant local support from the extensive Turkish community in Germany, and noisy backing in stadiums, they have framed their progress with a brilliant 3-1 win over Georgia and the accomplished, valiant undoing of Austria to serve notice that, be it the Dutch in Berlin at the weekend, or England or the Swiss in the possible semi-final that would follow, nobody