In the main video of this article, see the amazing goals of the European Championships. This summer, there have been an extraordinary number of goals in the women’s tournament. The main goals conceded to Finland are a nasty statistic stain.
Every match of the European Football Championship can be seen on ‘s channels. Competition games, background stories, news, highlight clips can be found on ‘s competition page here.
The women’s European football championships have seen an exceptional number of goals this summer.
When only the final matches of the D-group have yet to be played in the initial groups, a total of 75 goals have been scored in the games. Of these hits, a total of 27 goals have been scored on the ball. The percentage of main goals therefore reaches an exceptionally high 36 percent in games with a lot of goals.
The difference to, for example, the previous women’s European Championships is big. In the most recent games in the summer of 2017, a total of 14 goals were scored above. At that time, a total of 68 goals were scored in the games, so the percentage of header goals was 20.59 percent at that time.
In the men’s European Championships in the summer of 2021, 142 goals were scored, of which 19 percent were scored, i.e. a total of 27 goals.
When looking at, for example, the five top leagues of men’s club teams, the proportion of goals scored on the ball is around 16–18 percent of all goals scored. This can be seen from last season, for example, in April by Soccerment, an analytics company that analyzes football data from the published report (you switch to another service).
In the women’s games this summer, the most effective scorer so far has been Germany Alexandra Popp. The German striker, who missed the previous two European Championships, has scored three European Championship goals, all of which have come on goal.
As the European Championships progress to the quarter-final stage on Wednesday, it can be expected that the number of goals in the competitions will decrease, while the teams playing against each other will be more evenly matched. It will be interesting to see how the trend of an exceptionally high number of main goals plays out.
You can view some of the best main goals made so far by clicking on the main image of the story.
Finland tops the scoring charts
For Finland, the main goals conceded are a particularly unpleasant blemish in the statistics.
Helmare’s games ended on Saturday in the B initial group. Helmarit scored a total of eight goals in their three preliminary group matches against Spain, Denmark and Germany. Six of these ended up as Finnish goalkeepers Tinja-Riikka Korpelan or Katriina Talaslahten pushing behind the back.
Lukema’s tally is the highest among the teams in the games in terms of goals conceded. Portugal and Norway conceded the next most goals, each conceding four goals in their three matches. Both of them qualified from the playoffs of the games like Finland.
In Finland, the stain brought by main game goals started to spread already in the first game against Spain. Helmarit conceded a total of three main game goals in the match, two of which came from special situations.
Worked as TV commentator for the match in Milton Keynes Maiju Rootsalainen already at that time criticized the defense of the Helmares as lazy.
– Who would have thought that Spain is the team that scores the main goals. Finland defends too loosely. You have to go forward and make a small contact so that the opponent doesn’t get up to speed. The defender must be the first between the ball and the goal, but now more Spaniards got away from the defenders again, the Swede stated in the middle of the struggle, by the time Spain took a 3–1 lead.
In addition to the individual defensive skills mentioned by Ruotsalainen, Finland suffered from the weak teamwork of its defensive line. Helmarit often left its sixteen area in front of the core center completely empty, which was caused on several occasions by the problems of guarding the players and defending the area.
– When defending the penalty area, the ball often guides Finland’s thinking too much. It causes that mutual communication disappears here too and the bottom line does not take into account the dangerous movements of the opponents, Urheilu’s expert Jonne Kunnas stated in his analysis after the match against Spain.
The initial group stage of the European Football Championship ends today, Monday. Iceland–France and Italy–Belgium live on ‘s channels from 10 p.m.