Undoubtedly, anything can happen in the world of sports because it is very unpredictable. You never know what will happen next. You can never tell when one will lose. One moment you hear the roar of applause from the crowd and the next, echoes of boos. Isn't it sad when your perfectly-fit favorite player gets injured during a crucial match or when the world's favorite team loses to the least favorite team that had no chances of winning? Just when you become sure that your team is going to win, a weird twist of fate happens and your team loses.
Whenever such a situation occurs, we call it a Cinderella story. Up till now, many events like that have occurred which has left fans thrilled and surprised. Here is one of the most famous Cinderella stories that happened over a decade ago.
Cinderella Story of Greece National Soccer Team
This story occurred in the year 2004 when the national soccer team of Greece qualified (for the first time in twenty-four years) for the European Championships. Of course, they weren't anyone's favorite at that point except for their fans because the last time that they played in any big tournament was 1994's World Cup about twenty years ago, and they lost all of their matches badly.
But not this time! Greece was very pleased that they at least got selected for the championship. They thought that they might not win the cup but will surely try to win some of the matches to improve their ranking.
Group Matches & Knockout Stage
In the opening fixture, Greece defeated the host nation, which was Portugal, and stunned everyone. Their fans were crying out of happiness and Portugal's fans were shedding real tears of distress.
After that, there was a tie between Greece and Spain, both in the game as well as in the group standings. Here, Greece remarkably broke the tie and moved on to the knock-out stage, throwing Spain out of the tournament.
Nevertheless, the route to the finals wasn't easy for Greece because they had to knock the defending champion France to survive in the competition. At this point, they must have thought that this might be their last game because the French team went completely undefeated in the group stage. However, just like Portugal and Spain, the French too could not stand the Greek defense and eventually lost.
Semifinal and Final
In the semifinals, Greece had to play against the Czech Republic. There were a lot of murmurs that they'd surely lose this match as the Czech were the favorite at that time and hadn't lost any of their matches. But no, Greece wasn't in the mood of giving up and kept surprising everyone.
The teams that qualified for the finals were Greece, of course, and Portugal. Hence, there was to be a rematch between these two teams and it was high time for Portugal to take their revenge of the opening match. Portugal, the host team, could win the finals. And so it began. Everyone had a firm belief that Portugal would surely win the cup, but unbelievably, Greece won and became the Champions of the Euro Cup 2004.
No doubt, anything is possible if you are determined enough to do it.
