This is the poorest Euros of the modern era

Not many people remember Romania’s game with France in Zurich, on June 9, 2008, and there is a reason for that, writes Martin Samuel.

London - Not many people remember Romania’s game with France in Zurich, on June 9, 2008, and there is a reason for that. It was the only goalless draw at the group stage of a European Championship in three days short of 12 years.

Between Latvia versus Germany on June 19, 2004 and Germany’s 0-0 draw with Poland at the Stade de France last week, Romania versus France is the only occasion when the point of the sport had not been achieved, at least once.

And those years were good fun, so Uefa soon put a stop to it. Every nine games. That is the average for goalless draws at this tournament. Every nine games there is a blank. In the five 16-team editions before this, from 1996 to 2012, just eight games in 120 finished 0-0 - or one every 15.

So while it is wonderful that Iceland have thrived, and the Republic of Ireland have found another back door to burst through and Hungary are back on the map, it has come at a price. The poorest European Championship of the modern era.

Unmemorable match-ups, uneven encounters, too many occasions when stalemate has needed to be reimagined as victory. The expansion to 24 teams has favoured the ordinary, the elimination of just eight at the group stage has benefitted the safe and mediocre.

Only on the very last day of the group phase did the competition come to life, with Portugal’s 3-3 draw with Hungary. Yet it is an exception - having double the number of goals of any game so far, bar Croatia’s 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic. Indeed, these two of 36 matches account for 14.49 per cent of the goals that have been scored in the tournament.

The optimist’s view is that the competition will open up from here, at the knockout stages, but it often doesn’t. The 2014 World Cup was brilliant in the group stage, then grew tighter and more tactical with the threat of instant elimination. Take Germany’s 7-1 savaging of Brazil away and the average number of goals per game beyond the groups was 1.6. (This does not include the third place play-off - and neither should the World Cup.)

So the groups are often where the action is - but not here. The modern European Championship began in 1996, with the expansion to 16 teams, and since that event this is the first occasion when the goals per game ratio has dipped below two in the group stage.

Euro 2016 has delivered the two lowest scoring groups in that period, the only groups not to achieve double figures in goals scored, the lowest top-scoring group and the poorest numbers of goals per game. It came five short of being outscored by Euro 2000, having played 12 extra matches.

The highest scoring group at Euro 2016 is Group F with 15 goals. The average number of goals per group at the last five tournaments has been 14.9, and in both 2000 and 2004 three of the four groups recorded more than 15 goals.

Yet, superficially, the new format looks to be a success. No team has been embarrassed and Uefa will claim a nation such as Northern Ireland has been given the opportunity to experience the tournament as never before. Yet Northern Ireland won their qualifying group. They would have been here anyway. So, too, in all likelihood would Wales and Slovakia, who were both in strong form to progress through the second-placed play-offs.

Mostly, the teams that benefitted from Uefa’s expansion are the ones going home: Ukraine, Sweden, Albania, Romania and Turkey. Hungary won a third-place play-off, and then won their group, play-off winners Republic of Ireland also made it through, although that would have been less likely had Italy needed a result. Iceland are clearly this tournament’s love interest.

Yet it wasn’t as if the European Championship was without romance before. Greece won in 2004. Russia, Turkey and the Czech Republic have all made the semi-finals in the previous three editions. By greedily inflating the numbers, Uefa have destroyed arguably the most competitive, high standard, international tournament in football.

They have made a draw a good result - Portugal got three of them to qualify - and made a virtue of the defensive, negative football that has defined the progress of teams such as Slovakia and, yes, Iceland.

While not making excuses for England, the fact remains that Slovakia played with an absence of ambition in Saint-Etienne on Monday, and it is highly likely Iceland will do the same in Nice. Good luck to them, plenty of ways to skin a cat and all that - but it isn’t what the European Championship was about.

This was a competition where teams had to hit the ground running, or disappear - that offered brutal opening match-ups, such as Germany v Portugal, Spain v Italy and France v England (all 2012), Holland v Italy (2008) and Germany v Holland (2004).

Instead, were it not for the blunder made by Spain, Euro 2016 would have to wait for the quarter-finals for the really heavyweight collisions. If anything, the elite of European football have been made to feel safer than ever - their biggest challenge now is breaking down the cussed smaller nations, not measuring up to the biggest ones.

While Iceland are a nuisance, they cannot do what Germany did to Portugal in 2012, and inflict a first-game defeat. Italy lost to Holland 3-0 in their opening game in 2008. When will we see a shock like that in the group stage again?

The 24-team European Championship arrived on Michel Platini’s watch and, meeting him in 2013, he gave what remains the most persuasive explanation for the decision. ‘I have to bring some national associations to participate in the Euro, because you sometimes have to give them the pleasure to participate,’ he said.

‘If you have 13 teams in the World Cup and 16 teams in the Euro, you have always 16 teams that participate and I have to give to one country the pleasure to win, to participate in the competition.

‘When Wales win, they are proud, the public. I have to give sometimes to Slovakia or to Czech Republic or to Norway, I have to give them the pleasure to participate.’

That’s a fair point. It is good that Hungary were involved for the first time since 1972 and that Iceland and Albania have now won their first matches at international tournaments. Uefa are taking a lot of unwarranted credit, too, for small nations such as Northern Ireland, Wales and Slovakia who, in all likelihood, would have qualified for a 16-team tournament just as positively.

But, yes, there was certainly a danger that national competitions could lose their charm in many countries if there was never hope of reaching the finals. So, as Uefa are not about to backtrack on 24-team competitions now, maybe the format needs to be reviewed.

The 1982 World Cup also had a 24-team format, but only two teams from each of the six groups progressed, making it more like the old European Championship in the need to make a good start. That then left 12 teams who split into four groups of three, playing a round robin to set up semi-finals.

It is pointless looking at the statistics, because they are skewed by results such as Hungary 10, El Salvador 1, but it is remembered as a good World Cup, with classic games such as Italy 3 Brazil 2, and the 3-3 semi-final draw and subsequent penalty shoot-out between Germany and France.

Something has to be done, though, because we cannot sit around waiting for Cristiano Ronaldo and an Icelandic breakaway to save the day again. Not across 36 games, two weeks and just 69 goals.

Daily Mail