There is a seminal 1986 journal article from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Ian Franks and Gary Miller tested novice coaches on their recall ability of critical moments from one half of an international match. On average, only 42 per cent were correctly remembered.
Follow-up studies vindicated those findings. Advertisement In light of that, consider how much must be forgotten or (worse) misremembered across a major tournament, with so many games and so much emotion involved. Yet such tournaments can act as a tactical time capsule.
Let’s open up Euro 2024...
Fast starts and weird game states Everyone knows major tournament games have cagey starts. Except, at Euro 2024, they were anything but. Four of the six fastest goals in European Championship history were at this tournament, including the two quickest: Nedim Bajrami for Albania against Italy (23 seconds) and Merih Demiral for Turkey versus Austria (57 seconds).
Those four goals were completely different: Italy making an error at their own throw-in against Albania, Turkey scoring from a corner, Youri Tielemans’ goal against Romania came from an incisive passing move in settled possession, and Georgia ’s opener versus Portugal was a counter-attack. It underlined the tactical variety of the tournament. There were teams built on nuanced tactical plans (Austria, Germany), who had build-up and pressing schemes similar to club sides, with head coaches recently in the club game.
At the other end, some of the big.
