The European Football Championship was a celebration of special situation goals, audience records and finally the host country England. Urheilu listed the topics for which the summer games will be remembered.
The summer 2022 European football championships ended yesterday with England’s celebrations. The host nation won the final match against Germany in front of a full Wembley stadium.
The tournament, which was heralded in advance as the greatest value tournament of all time in women’s football, answered the call in many ways. Several spectator records were broken at the games and more goals were scored than ever before.
However, in the tournament played in England, there were also negative topics of conversation and areas for development, as is usual for prestige games.
In this article, Urheilu lists the most talked about topics of the European Championships from both an international and a Finnish perspective.
The main and special situation goals were brilliant – the goal record was broken
A total of 95 were made in the European Championship. They broke the record of the European Championship played in Finland in 2009. At that time, a total of 75 goals were scored.
There were an exceptional number of special situational goals scored in the tournament. More than 50 percent of all goals in the games came through special situations.
In the end, 26 goals were scored in the tournament. The number one team in scoring main goals was Germany, which scored six main goals in the net of its opponents in the European Championships.
You can see all the 26 main goals of the games as potpourri in the video below.
England was crowned as the goalscoring queen of the Games Beth Mead. He scored six goals in the tournament and took the goal record of the games thanks to assists. Germany came second Alexandra Popp also succeeded six times, but lost the final match after being injured in the warm-up.
Finland’s grips were weaker than expected
Finland got a terrible initial group draw for the games, and it was not thought that it would get much against Germany, Spain and Denmark in a tough group. No points were expected.
Still, Helmarei’s game performances quickly went under the bench. The tournament got off to a rosy start when the striker Linda Sällström scored a goal for Finland after only 48 seconds of the game against Spain. After that, the going started to crumble only deeper into the ravine of weak performances.
Sällström’s goal was the only goal of the Finnish games, while a total of eight goals were scored in the blue and white team’s net. Finland’s biggest woes in defense were the defense of its own sixteen area and special situations.
Helmaret’s backpack wobbled too often due to marking errors, lack of game reading and many other problem areas related to the defensive game.
Having served as Finland’s head coach at the beginning of the Games Anna Signeulin management methods were criticized. During the tournament, criticism began to be directed even more towards the Swedish way of playing games and the conservatism of Finland’s way of playing. After the Games, Palloliitto announced that Signeul will no longer coach Helmarei in September’s World Cup qualifiers in accordance with his contract.
Steadfast Lina Lehtovaara – VAR action garnered harsh criticism
In terms of Finns, the most orderly performance in the games was made by the referee Lina Lehtovaara. The experienced Finnish referee refereed two matches in the games to a high standard and had to judge twice as the fourth referee of the fight.
Lehtovaara’s composure and game reading were praised. Lehtovaara was also involved in the referee selections of the EC final towards the very end, bending at the end. A Ukrainian was named the head referee of the EC final between England and Germany Kateryna Monzul.
– Lina held the Finnish flag very high and did excellently. In the first game, there was a hand foul and the penalty kick was missed, but I know how difficult it is to see a hand foul. In the Italy-Iceland game, especially in the second half, he was a very strong leader, and I appreciate that especially in the refereeing. I think he has done very, very well, a former referee with a long international career Matthias Gestranius evaluate before the final.
In refereeing, the biggest criticism was – as is often the case nowadays – the operation of the video referee system, or VAR.
In Sweden, there was a huge criticism of the video refereeing of the EC final tournament at the latest when Stina Blackstenius goal disallowed against Belgium. It was a shot rejected by the tournament’s Fifth Sweden after a VAR check. The criticism of the Swedes got more serious in the semifinals of the games, when England’s 2-0 goal was accepted after a VAR review.
Swedish media and especially SVT’s referee expert Jonas Eriksson gave UEFA’s operation a full thumbs up more than once. Criticism was aimed at the minimum number of VAR cameras in the women’s tournament and the comments made by the association.
Celebration of audience records
The stadiums of the European Championship in England constantly saw audience records. The 2022 Games became the most watched games of all time in terms of the number of viewers.
The opening group match between England and Austria, which had already started the games, showed the direction when a total of 68,871 pairs of eyes came to watch the match at Manchester’s Old Trafford.
After that, the attendance record for matches played by a non-host country was continuously set, as were the records for the playoff stage.
Exceptional interest crowned Wembley. Before the match, even the players of the English men’s national team had to ask for tickets to the sold-out stadium. In the end, a total of 87,192 spectators watched the intimate final on the spot. It is the largest audience for the finals, including all the men’s EC competitions
A total of more than 500,000 people followed the games on site during the entire tournament.