Arda Guler had done it before. His first-ever goal for Turkey was a delightful curler from outside the box. And so, when he let the ball fly on his Euros debut against Georgia, the ‘Turkish Messi’ had little doubt about the shot’s outcome — piercing through the crisp Dortmund air and bending beautifully to ruffle the top corner.
The goal made Guler the youngest scorer at the Euros; the talk of the tournament’s early stages. More significantly, it put long-range goals in vogue. Guler’s isn’t the only one.
Twelve out of the 42 goals scored so far in the Euros (until the Scotland-Switzerland match) were screamers from outside the box. This, the game’s stats-keepers said, is an anomaly. Everywhere else, the number of goals and shots from outside the box is decreasing.
Advertisement Long rangers, they argued, were out of fashion and on a sharp decline, if not on the verge of extinction. Numbers backed this theory: at Euro 2012, only 8 out of the total 76 goals were scored from outside the box. Four years later, the figure doubled to 16 but so did the total goals, which increased to 108 meaning the long-rangers accounted for 14.
8 per cent. And at Euro 2020, 19 out of the 142 goals were scored from a distance (all stats from Opta). Even in the English Premier League, only 11.
5 percent of goals were scored from outside the box last season, the lowest since 2010/11 according to Opta. And at the 2022 World Cup, zero long-range goals were scored in the first round of gro.