soccer4life

The 2016 European Championship which kicked off on the 10th of June has been a fascinating one not only because of the beautiful display on the filed of play by the players, or the type of goals scored, neither is it because of the inability of pre tournament star players to stamp their authority on games. But because it has been able to produce some certain feat which includes;

1. No team progressed to the second round with maximum point.
compare to the qualification stages to the tournament where teams strolled their way to the Euros scoring lots of goal on the way. This is not the case in the tournament proper as teams have been made to grind out results. Its interesting to know that the maximum point obtained by any team during the group phases is seven (7) points which were achieved by the following teams; France, Germany, Poland (both in group C), Croatia. Teams with five points even progressed to the next round as group winners.

2. The competition has been filled with quite a number of late goals.
The Euro 2016 seems to have emerged as the tournament that have seen the highest number of late goals in the group stages of matches.
A look at the statistics shows that goals have been hard to come by in the early stages of games. Below are the times goals have been scored so far in the tournament.
 5, 7, 10, 10, 11, 18, 18, 19, 19, 20, 30, 31, 32, 32, 34, 37, 37, 40, 41, 42, 42, 43, 45, 45, 47, 48, 48, 48, 49, 50, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 57, 59, 60, 61, 61, 62, 62, 65, 65, 67, 70, 71, 73, 76, 80, 81, 84, 85, 87, 87, 87, 88, 88, 89, 89, 90, 92, 92, 92, 93, 94, 96, 96. 
3. All pre tournament under dogs have given good account of themselves. 
The tournament witnessed lots of team coming to the competition for the first time in a long while.
First timers Iceland progressed to the knock out stage of the competition, teams like Hungary, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Slovakia all made it to the next round of the competition.

4. Ronaldo became the first player to make a 17th European Championship appearance
Cristiano Ronaldo may have had a quiet competition till their final group match where he starred and help his team to a third place finish. The game against Hungary made it his 17th European Championship appearance which is now a record in the Euros.

5.   Cristiano Ronaldo became the first player to score in four different European Championship. 
The Portuguese always have a way of coming to the limelight. He has been living under the shadow of Lionel Messi who is doing performing outstandingly well with his Argentine National team at the centenary Copa America for the past few weeks  due to his lack of goals in the ongoing Euros and his provocative comment after their first game against Iceland. But Ronaldo chose to keep the best for last as he scored twice in their last group game to earn his country a place in the knock out round.