Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. Our latest edition includes some of the most interesting numbers from the final of Euro 2024, and the tournament as a whole.
And there you have it. After a month of action, 51 games and 117 goals, the best team won Euro 2024.
Spain’s 2-1 win over England in Sunday’s final may have broken the Three Lions’ hearts, but it was a thoroughly deserved tournament victory for Luis de la Fuente’s side, and in this edition of SVQ we’ll be looking at what set La Roja apart from the rest.
We’ll also dive into some xG; in particular, England’s struggles with it despite reaching the final.
There’s a quiz about the final as well, and our last Stat’s All Folks where you captioned the heat map of UEFA’s Player of the Tournament.
We hope you’ve enjoyed having more SVQ in your inbox during Euro 2024. Now the tournament is over, we’ll be going back to sending our regularly scheduled Stat, Viz, Quiz out once a week, every Tuesday.
If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe below and receive SVQ every week.
STAT – What Happened to the Goals?
It was a promising start to Euro 2024 (unless you’re Scottish).
Hosts Germany beat Scotland 5-1 and it seemed as though we might get another goal-filled European Championship, as we did three years ago.
The rearranged Euro 2020 tournament saw 142 goals scored in 51 games, a whopping 34 more than were seen at Euro 2016.
However, the three goals in Sunday’s final took the grand total of Euro 2024 to just 117 – 25 fewer than at Euro 2020.
That could be down to any number of factors: improvements in defensive shape/performance, generally poorer finishing, better goalkeeping, or maybe just the impact of there being more fans in the stadiums compared to Euro 2020, which was played during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You might be surprised to learn there were actually more shots at Euro 2024 compared to three years ago. We saw 1,312 attempts (including blocked shots), up from 1,243 at Euro 2020. The overall xG was also higher, with 133.26 xG in Germany, up from 121.58 xG three years ago.
That therefore means there was an overperformance in xG at Euro 2020 of more than 20 goals, while there was an underperformance at Euro 2024 of over 16 goals.
Curiously, the number of own goals was close and goals from outside the box was exactly the same as it was three years ago.
If you’ve been reading SVQ throughout Euro 2024, you’ll know there had been a high number of both. Well, now we can reveal the final numbers.
There were 10 own goals scored at Euro 2024, one shy of the 11 seen at Euro 2020. Thanks to Cole Palmer’s equaliser in the final, Euro 2024 finished level with Euro 2020 for goals from outside the box (19).
Considering there were 25 goals fewer overall, that means there was a dip in non-own goals scored from inside the box at Euro 2024, only 88 compared to 112 at Euro 2020 and 89 at Euro 2016.
Football works in cycles, so who knows how Euro 2028 will go? Will we see lots of goals, even more own goals, fewer from outside the box, some going in off players’ backsides?
We’ve only got four more years to wait… (stares at the clock intently).
VIZ – xG Whiz
Whether you’re a fan of expected goals as a metric or not, it can be a useful indicator of how threatening a team is in a game, or especially across several games.
Sunday’s two finalists were quite a way apart in their total xG for the tournament going into the game, and sure enough it was Spain who came out 2-1 in actual goals, and 1.95 to 0.53 in xG in Berlin on the night.
La Roja amassed a total of 13.01 xG at Euro 2024 across their seven games. That was at least three more than the next most (Germany – 9.83), albeit they played more games than anyone apart from England.
De la Fuente’s side backed up their xG and even outperformed it, scoring 15 goals at Euro 2024, the most by a nation in a single tournament in Euros history.
As you can see from the viz above, in the main and as to be expected, the more games teams played, the higher their xG climbed.
Despite playing the maximum of seven games, though, England ended up quite a way down on the right. Gareth Southgate’s men didn’t only fall well behind Spain for xG, they didn’t even manage as many as any of the losing semi-finalists or quarter-finalists.
In fact, Austria – who went out in the round of 16 – and even Croatia – eliminated in the group stage – managed greater tournament xG totals than England.
That’s despite the Three Lions playing two lots of extra-time, while also having an xG-boosting penalty in the semi-final win over the Netherlands.
Looking at non-penalty xG, England’s 0.77 per 90 minutes was only better than that of Scotland (0.32), Georgia, Serbia (both 0.7) and Romania (0.71).
England’s defence got them to the final, but ultimately, they couldn’t get past Spain.
It might hurt for England fans to hear, but attacking football was the winner in Germany.
QUIZ – The Euro 2024 Final Quiz
The Euros is over for another edition. Yes, it’s very sad but at least we can squeeze another quiz out of it. Answers at the bottom of the page.
1. Spain have won the UEFA European Championship four times, the most of any nation in the competition’s history. Apart from 2024, what other years did they lift the trophy?
2. Mikel Oyarzabal became the fourth substitute to score a winner in a Euros final. Name any of the other three.
3. In their last 12 games in all competitions, how many times have England conceded the first goal?
4. In the 181 minutes he played across both the Euro 2020 and 2024 finals, how many shots did England captain Harry Kane have?
5. Six players tied for the Euro 2024 Golden Boot with three goals each, the same number of players who tied with the same amount of goals for the award at Euro 2012. Can you name any of the six players who shared the Golden Boot in the competition 12 years ago?
Stat’s All Folks
It’s an appropriate name for this segment, as ‘stat’ is indeed now all, folks.
In our final Euros newsletter, we bring you the last winning caption for the previous viz we provided you with.
Appropriately enough, it was Rodri’s heat map from Euro 2024 prior to the final. Despite going off at half-time in the final, the Spain midfielder picked up UEFA’s Player of the Tournament award for his efforts.
The best caption came from Silvestar Bistrović, who went with: “Rodri took the box-to-box midfielder definition far too seriously.”
It was quite the performance from Rodri at Euro 2024; almost as impressive as all of you who sent in rib-tickling captions throughout the tournament.
From next week, we’ll be going back to giving you the chance to Ask Opta. Any stats-based questions you want us to tackle, send them to editors@theanalyst.com and we’ll do our best to provide you with the answers.
What Are We up to at Opta Analyst?
Here’s some of the latest data-driven offerings you can find on our website:
The 13 Best Stats from Euro 2024
Gareth Southgate Brought England Eight Years of Hope, but It’s Time for Change
Opta’s Euro 2024 Team of the Tournament
From Start to Finish, Spain Deserved to Win Euro 2024
Quiz Answers
1. 1964, 2008 and 2012.
2. Oliver Bierhoff for Germany in 1996, David Trezeguet for France in 2000 and Éder for Portugal in 2016.
3. Eight times. England have now conceded first in four matches in a row for the first time since May/June 1985.
4. One. Kane also had just one touch in the opposition box and only 58 touches of the ball across both finals.
5. Fernando Torres, Mario Balotelli, Alan Dzagoev, Mario Mandzukic, Mario Gomez and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Before you go…
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