The start of this Euro 2024 It was the best scoring start in the history of the competition in terms of average goals per game since the edition played in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2000, almost a quarter of a century ago.
The last goal scored almost at the end by Francisco Conceicao in Portugal-Czech Republic, to give victory to the Portuguese team, has left the tally that Florian Wirtz started in the 10th minute of Germany-Scotland, at 34 goals in 12 games on the first day, stopping the average at a considerable 2.83 so many per game.
These figures have remained close to the mark of 3 goals per game established on the first day of the Euro 2000.
The next bar is set by the five goals per game in the 1976 Yugoslavia edition, which would end up being resolved with Antonin Panenka’s historic penalty for Czechoslovakia to win the title.
Since it introduced the group stages, with its expansions of both teams and rounds, the Euro 2000 had been the most prolific in terms of goals per game in terms of the opening of the championship, in which the Portugal 3- 2 England and Yugoslavia 3-3 Slovenia, and 24 goals were scored in 8 games.
However, there are two facts to highlight from that edition of the mid-70s when comparing it with the 2.83 goals per game in the current competition.
Florian Wirtz inaugurates the Euro Cup goal celebration
On the one hand, the 1976 Euro Cup was the last to be played in a four-way final format, with which the tournament had been created in 1960, which was accessed after passing the qualifying phase and a previous round of quarterfinals. with round trip, which meant that the first five editions only had an opening day of two games.
And on the other hand, in those two semi-finals, Czechoslovakia-Netherlands and West Germany-Yugoslavia, 10 goals were scored -five per game-, four of which went up on the scoreboard in the extra time with which both games were decided (3-1 in the first and 4-2 in the second).
That is to say, with regard to the data limited only to the goals at the end of the 90 minutes, the average would drop to three per game: exactly the same as that of the Euro 2000 Championship, after which the scoring start of the current championship.
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The current average mark is the fifth best in the history of the Euro Cup in starting days. The record in this section is still in the hands of the first of all the European Championships: the one played in France in 1960, when the semi-finals France-Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia-Soviet Union yielded a total of 12 goals, which translates into an average of 6 per duel.
In the 16 national team championships of the Old Continent that have taken place – the current one is the seventeenth -, up to four different formats have been tested, which were modified as more teams were added to the final phase of the tournament.
From the initial four members in the semifinals and final, it evolved to eight teams distributed in two groups, then to 16 in four groups of four squads, ending with the current twenty-four participants grouped in six groups of four.
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Until now, since the expansions occurred in the tournament, the record of Belgium and Netherlands 2000 was closely followed by the start of the competition in Poland and Ukraine in 2012, when 20 goals were recorded in 8 duels, highlighting Russia 4-1 Czech Republic as the highest scoring confrontation, raising the average to 2.5, and that of the last edition, the 2020 multi-venue, postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in which the average stood at 2.33 goals after having collected 28 hits in 12 matches, with the Netherlands 3-2 Ukraine as the one that contributed the most to the total sum.
At the opposite pole of the statistics is the start of the 1968 European Championship in Italy, when only one goal rose on the scoreboard in the two semifinals (0.5 goals per game) between Italy and the Soviet Union on the one hand and Yugoslavia and England. for another. The Balkan Dragan Džajić was the only one who scored between both disputes. The other, the one involving the hostess, was settled with the toss of a coin in the air whose fortune fell to the transalpines.
Curiously, the second Euro Cup with the worst record in terms of scoring starts would also take place in the ‘land of the boot’. In Italy 1980, the first in which a group stage was introduced prior to the qualifying rounds for the title, only four goals illuminated the scoreboard in the first four games that made up the opening day.
Slovakia celebrated with all its historic victory against Belgium in the Euro Cup
