Final tournaments tend to encourage cautious football, with too much at stake for teams to truly cut loose.
However, matches at past UEFA European Championships have provided plenty of goals, as EURO2020.com discovers.
Most emphatic wins
Netherlands 6-1 Yugoslavia (25/06/2000, quarter-final)
Denmark 5-0 Yugoslavia (16/06/1984, group stage)
France 5-0 Belgium (16/06/1984, group stage)
Sweden 5-0 Bulgaria (14/06/2004, group stage)
Slovakia 0-5 Spain (23/06/2021, group stage)
There have now been five wins by five-goal margins at the finals – the first two, for Denmark and France, coming on the same day in 1984, Michel Platini scoring a hat-trick for Les Bleus. Patrick Kluivert, meanwhile, got three in co-hosts the Netherlands’ demolition of Yugoslavia at UEFA EURO 2000: the biggest knockout-phase victory. Spain’s 5-0 win against Slovakia at EURO 2020 was the biggest winning margin in a EURO game for 17 years
Most goals in a single EURO game
France 4-5 Yugoslavia (06/07/1960, semi-final)
The first game of the first EURO finals set the bar impossibly high. Despite the absences of star players Raymond Kopa and Just Fontaine, hosts France led 4-2 only to come unstuck in the closing stages. Tomislav Knež (75) and Dražan Jerković (78, 79) hit three goals in the space of five minutes to silence the Parc des Princes.
Highest-scoring draws at a EURO
Russia 3-3 Czech Republic (19/06/1996, group stage)
Yugoslavia 3-3 Slovenia (13/06/2000, group stage)
Hungary 3-3 Portugal (22/06/2016, group stage)
Drama at every turn here: Vladimír Šmicer’s late goal earned the Czechs qualification in the 1996 game, while Yugoslavia rallied from 3-0 down to hold Slovenia in the 2000 game. Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, struck twice to salvage a draw against Hungary and a place in the 2016 knockout phase for Portugal – the rest, as they say, is history.
Most emphatic win in a EURO final
Spain 4-0 Italy (01/07/2012)
Italy’s thrilling knockout campaign caught up with them in Kyiv, Spain in control from the moment David Silva broke the deadlock, the Azzurri ending the game with ten men after their third substitute Thiago Motta had to be carried off on a stretcher. Spain thus became the first side to win back-to-back EUROs.
Highest-scoring final at a EURO
Czechoslovakia 2-2 West Germany (aet, Czechoslovakia win 5-3 on pens, 20/06/1976)
Spain 4-0 Italy (01/07/2012)
Technically the ball hit the back of the net more in the 1976 final, the only one to date to be settled on penalties, but shoot-out conversions do not count as goals in our statistics. Interestingly, the side who has scored first has won 12 of the 15 EURO finals to date; the winners conceded first in 1960, 1996 and 2000.
