Denmark - 2 Sweden - 2: Talk from the Italian camp in recent days about how these two would somehow engineer a draw involving four goals or more and thereby ensure the elimination from Euro 2004 of Giovanni Trapattoni's star-studded squad prompted most people to pose the rather reasonable question: just how two teams pull that sort of thing off without the rest of the world smelling a rather pungent rat?

If, however, the course of last night's game at Porto's Bessa Stadium really was the product of an elaborate plan hatched by two friendly neighbours to carve up their group's quarter-final places then Italians have every right to feel sore but the rest of us, it's also worth noting, have been hugely underestimating the entertainment potential of fixes because this one was a cracker.

The Italians, no doubt, will have the game watched countless times by teams of highly-trained conspiracy theorists. Ultimately, though, the more reasonable amongst them will realise that they have themselves rather than any Danish collusion in Mattias Jonson's last minute equaliser to blame for their early trip home.

The Danes may have had the better of the opening half but after a particularly strong start they fell some way short of establishing a real dominance. Time after time they swept forward in what was a frantically fast game with Martin Jorgensen on the left and Jesper Gronkjaer on the right tearing into the space around full-backs who had already been shown to be vulnerable in the games against Bulgaria and Italy.

Playing just off Ebbe Sand, Jon Dahl Tomasson was the main beneficiary of the pair's tireless work with the striker picking up possession several times in promising positions only to be smothered by Swedes as he looked to line up a shot.

Just short of midway through the half, though, the Milan striker secured his side's breakthrough. From a throw in down the left Sand played a neat flick and the ball hopped kindly in front of his team-mate. Olof Mellberg and Mikael Nilsson then stood off the 27-year-old just long enough for the Dane to spot Andreas Isaksson standing a yard too far off his line and with a perfectly judged lob he found the top corner of the net.

Suddenly threatened with elimination from a tournament they had started so well the Swedes reacted furiously, further upping the pace of their game and throwing themselves forward with plenty of passion if not quite the required amount of precision.

The best of their chances in the exchanges that followed fell to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the imposing striker who had grabbed Sweden's equaliser against Italy last Friday, and Mellberg. The former's follow-up shot after Thomas Sorensen had saved well was weak and poorly directed, allowing him off the hook when he might easily have been beaten while the centre back's header from beyond the left-hand post had the goalkeeper beaten but came crashing back off the foot of the post for the Danes to clear.

Sorensen's luck, however, wasn't to hold out. Scarcely 30 seconds into the second half Henrik Larsson raced clear down the right and the Aston Villa goalkeeper raced out only to take the player instead of the ball. From the penalty that followed the reportedly Barcelona-bound striker drove the ball low and to the left.

The scoreline would be enough for the Swedes but not, if the Italians won, their opponents and so, quite perceptively, the sense of urgency in the game shifted as the Danes, driven on from deep in the centre of midfield by Thomas Gravesen, sought to recover their early momentum. Sure enough they regained the upper hand and when the Everton midfielder's fiercely struck shot from just outside the area 66 minutes in came rolling off the legs of a defender and towards the edge of the six-yard box it was Tomasson who reacted most quickly, pouncing this time to shoot home into the bottom right corner.

At this stage the Italian-inspired script called for the pendulum to swing once more with the Swedes now reasserting themselves but this time, for all their best efforts to press forward in search of another equaliser, they couldn't quite turn the game around.

Instead, it was the Danes who continued to sweep forward into the space that now lay open to them in front of Isaksson's goal, but they failed to grab the third which would have put the Swedes out.

On his side's one desperate break to the other end, however, Jonson hit the equaliser after Christian Wilhelmsson had weaved his way to the dead-ball line and pulled back a short cross which Sorenson merely parried towards the Brondby striker. The last few minutes were played out with neither side showing any interest in grabbing a late winner, a situation that added some fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theorists.