Belgium defender Thomas Vermaelen’s header hit the ground first and then rose before colliding with the post near the corner where it meets the crossbar.

As the ball spun out, sideways toward the middle of the goal, Lukas Hradecky, the Finland goalkeeper, was still turning around. Instinctively, Hradecky reached out a hand to try to swat the ball away. In that instant, on his fingertips, a substantial portion of Euro 2020 hung.

Had Hradecky clawed the ball away from his goal, Finland might have qualified for the knockout stages of the first major tournament they have ever reached.

Denmark, playing simultaneously in Copenhagen, might have been sent home.

That he could not, though, affected far more than the games in Finland’s group. That goal effectively set the course of almost half the teams in the tournament.

It meant that Denmark would qualify for the knockouts – despite losing its first two games, despite enduring the trauma of seeing Christian Eriksen collapse on the field – as long as they held on (as they did) to beat Russia.

But the goal was also good news for Switzerland. They had finished off their initial slate of games the previous night and were waiting to discover if it had done enough to remain in the tournament. Finland’s loss meant they could relax.

In Group D, a Finnish defeat meant that both England and the Czech Republic had made it to the round of 16, too.

Their game, the next day, would be an administrative exercise, establishing which of the two had the dubious pleasure, given the draw for the knockouts, of finishing first in the group.

Croatia and Scotland knew, too, that whichever team won their game would be guaranteed to join them in the last 16.

It did not stop there. All of a sudden, despite having a game left to play, Sweden and France were through, too. Portugal and, most likely, Spain would join them with only a draw in their final match.

Ukraine’s hopes, meanwhile, were left hanging by a thread, reliant on another team capitulating to remain in the tournament (Slovakia would later oblige). All of their fates had been decided by a single goal.

Monday (June 21) night’s conclusion to Group B was a masterpiece of slow-burn drama.

The names involved – Finland, Denmark, Russia – might have been less glamorous, but it was no less enthralling than the hour and a half of chaos staged by France, Germany, Portugal and Hungary in Group F a couple of days later.

Between them, the games were a better advertisement for the tournament’s 24-team structure than Uefa, which runs the event, could have possibly hoped.

It is, the competition’s organiser admits, a somewhat arcane format: one in which 36 games are played to eliminate only eight teams, and in which not only do the group winners and runners-up qualify, but also four teams that have finished third.

As tempting as it is to idealise the more traditional formats, the 16-team blueprint previously employed for the Euro and the 32-team structure familiar from the World Cup can be pedestrian.

But both have one substantial advantage on the system that has played out over the last two weeks.

It is not just that, because 16 of 24 teams qualify for the latter stages, there is too much reward and too little risk (although that is not nearly so pronounced as it is in this year’s Copa América, in which the entire group phase is just a front for eliminating Bolivia and Venezuela).

It is that one game, as Finland-Belgium on Monday night neatly proved, can wield an influence on almost every group.

Uefa accepts that is a shortcoming of the structure as it stands. Logistically, it is less than ideal: Several teams only discovered the final identity of their last 16 opponents, and the locations of their games, when Group F concluded on Wednesday.

That made preparing for games and planning travel far more complex than the teams would like.

But the bigger problem is less pragmatic.

Sports are drama; a game is a self-contained narrative arc. The covenant between performers and viewers is that the former will provide the latter with a resolution.

A win means three points, or qualification for the next round. A defeat means no points, or elimination.

A win that might mean progress or might not is unsatisfactory. A resolution that is played out behind a curtain is a breaking of the covenant.

It is this that provides the most compelling argument to accept the direction of travel and declare that it is time for the European Championship to grow still further, to expand the finals to include 32 teams.

There is sufficient quality within Uefa’s ranks to invite more teams without diluting the standards of the tournament: Serbia, Norway, Romania, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Greece, Iceland and Bosnia (the eight best sides not present this year, according to Fifa’s deeply flawed ranking system) would add to, rather than subtract from, the competition.

To do so responsibly, however, Uefa would have to commit to a major reshaping of the way international football works.

Elite players are already being asked to play far too many games, both by their clubs and their countries.

FIFPro, the global players union, has repeatedly warned that burnout will lead to a surge in injuries, a belief shared by a number of leading coaches and, increasingly, by players themselves.

For the Euro to expand, then, something would have to give: namely, the laborious and predictable process of qualifying.

Rather than forcing the major nations to jump through hoops for two years before reaching the finals anyway, it would make more sense to guarantee each of them a place.

For the sake of appearances, perhaps that could be dressed up as a spot for all those nations that have won a major tournament: Italy, Germany, France, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece and Denmark. Russia and the Czech Republic could be included, too, despite technically winning the Euro in another life, and under another name.

They would be joined by the five highest-ranked teams not to have won an honour: Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Wales and Sweden.

Those 16 teams would be exempt from qualification, but rather than stand idle for two years, they would be drafted into a version of Uefa’s successful Nations League concept: four divisions of four teams, with the winners of each playing in a biennial, week-long tournament, as they do now.

The remaining 39 teams in Uefa’s ranks, meanwhile, would be arranged into seven qualifying groups of five teams, plus one group of four.

The top two in each would earn a place at the Euro.

They, too, would benefit from one of the lessons (that should have been) learned from the Nations League: that games between closely matched countries are better than an endless succession of blowouts.