Timing is everything in sports. Success requires both quality and well-timed opportunity.
One might not figure that a year would make that much of a difference, but a few of the teams on display at Euro 2020 look quite a bit different than they would have had the tournament gone on as planned last summer. Certain players' stock fell during that period of time -- hello, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dayot Upamecano -- but the delay created quite a bit of opportunity, for some of the sport's rising young stars and for a few veterans who made particular use of the past 12 months.