Trends at the 2024 European Championship: Own goals, streakers and unsuccessful set pieces

After the preliminary round, 36 of the 51 tournament matches have been played, so it’s time for an initial interim assessment: What stood out? What has been confirmed? The biggest tactical trend of the European Championship is clearly the significant increase in the number of long-range goals – there is a comprehensive analysis of this here. Six more observations from the stadiums.

Own dream goal

The 2021 European Championship was already the tournament of own goals: a player or goalkeeper scored eleven times in his own net, which was two more than at all previous European Championships combined. And this time, another record is possible. In 2021, eight own goals were scored during the group stage, but this time there were seven. As was the case three years ago, this does not mean that modern defenders have a tendency to commit harakiri – that was only the case with the tragicomic own goal by the Turk Samet Akaydin against Portugal or the Dutchman Donyell Malen. It is more likely to have something to do with how the opponents attack and hit the ball in front of the goal, namely often directly, flat and sharply from outside, often as a back pass. This can be extremely treacherous for defenders moving backwards.

Standard disadvantage

A quick reminder of March 24th of this year, when Christoph Baumgartner and Florian Wirtz scored two goals within seconds of kick-off that same evening and it became clear: kick-off tricks are the topic of the hour. Numerous teams, especially Germany and Austria, are trying out their sophisticated feints at the start of the game at the European Championships, but fail time and time again. The same applies to other so-called set pieces: although many teams are trying out rehearsed variations, fewer corners and free kicks are successful than in previous tournaments – which could be related to the fact that the defense is now much better prepared. Kick-off tricks have the same problem; it is the curse of the good deed done too early: because Baumgartner and Wirtz were conspicuous in March, they are now being better covered.

Giant Dwarves

For the first time since 1992, no team is leaving this European Championship completely unhappy, as every nation took at least one point from the group stage. In 1992, although it is hard to remember, the tournament was only played with eight teams. Since then, there has always been at least one team that has tried three times to get points, but failed three times. This time, Poland, the Czech Republic, Scotland and Albania also took a point, which is also representative of the balanced footballing level of this tournament. Germany’s 5:1 in the opening match against Scotland is the only result with a difference of four goals, but the number of goals scored is still not significantly low, with an average of 2.25 per game within the statistically normal range.

collectivism

Spain’s national coach Luis de la Fuente rotated ten positions before the third group match in order to rest a large part of his team; Austria’s team manager Ralf Rangnick used his two best players, Konrad Laimer and Christoph Baumgartner, the next day in order to avoid yellow card suspensions. And yet both won their games. Spain and Austria, along with Germany – where coach Nagelsmann seems similarly principle-oriented – were perhaps the best teams in the preliminary round. This is because they rely on a coherent footballing concept in which individual players are interchangeable, which seems particularly sensible given the many suspensions. The idea of ​​​​putting the emphasis on the team, rather than the talent of individual players, was the key to success for Spain between 2008 and 2012 – and it doesn’t just work at club level, as is often claimed.

Walls and drinking tea

Admittedly, what Gareth Southgate has his English national team playing is about as exciting for spectators as watching tea cool down. But unfortunately it follows the cold, cynical, calculating, but nevertheless always valid tournament truth: offense wins games, defense wins titles. Defending your own goal is easier – especially in national teams that tend to be less well-coordinated than in club football – than scoring one yourself, and that is why those teams that exploit every little advantage are successful in the long term. Southgate has already reached a European Championship final with his cautious football, and Didier Deschamps, the French national coach, also reached two World Cup finals with this style. In the case of England, however, the question is whether the full extent of the boredom is really just calculating.

Flitzmob

This article is actually supposed to be about the football trends of the tournament, but it is a trend at this European Championship to distract the footballers from playing football: there have probably never been so many streakers who gain unauthorized access to the pitch during matches and run across the field. By far the most frequent attempt was made by spectators at Portuguese matches for a selfie with Cristiano Ronaldo. At the match against Turkey alone, stewards chased seven streakers who had made it into the stadium. To make matters worse, one of the security guards accidentally tackled Portugal’s striker Gonçalo Ramos. But that was still a small number compared to a training session of the team in Gütersloh: the police had to lead 13 streakers off the pitch. UEFA announced additional security measures.