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The main themes from the first six days of Euro 2024 have largely been positive. We’ve seen high-tempo, high-scoring games, excellent atmospheres and the underdogs being competitive. But perhaps the most notable aspect has been the number of long-range goals.
At a time when many believe that shooting from distance is being discouraged in top-level club football, this European Championship has provided something of a contrast, with 12 of the 42 goals so far being scored from outside the penalty box.
But is this all true? And if so, what is the reason for the number of successful long-range strikes?
First, the decline in long-range goals has been somewhat exaggerated, using numbers from the Premier League.
It is certainly true that the total number of shots per game has steadily decreased over time. It is also true that the percentage — and number — of shots taken from outside the 18-yard box has fallen.
But there are a couple of misconceptions here.
First, possibly surprisingly considering the above statistics, it hasn’t actually led to a major decline in the raw number of goals scored from outside the penalty area.
Players are shooting less, and proportionally fewer of their shots are from long distances. But they’re still entirely allowed to shoot from beyond the 18-yard box at the right moments, and given that the last two Premier League seasons have both set records in terms of total goals scored, overall the pattern has not been one of clear decline.
In fact, it’s been interesting how much the line has jumped around — there are two clear spikes in the number of goals scored from outside the penalty area. (The first three Premier League seasons featured 22 clubs rather than 20, so figures for those years have been adjusted accordingly to represent a 20-team division).
In summary, there have been an average of 147 goals scored from outside the box per season in the Premier League. Last season’s tally was 143. If you can spot that marginal difference over the course of a nine-month season, you are very astute. Again, fewer attempts are from range, and a lower percentage of goals are scored from distance, but if you are simply in the market for goals scored from outside the box, to make a good league-wide Goal of the Month competition, you shouldn’t worry too much.
Second, it’s questionable whether analytics has played a major role in this, as is often insisted upon.
It’s clear that analytics has had a major impact on the shot distances in basketball, for example. The use of expected goals (xG) has possibly resulted in something similar happening in football. But, realistically, shot distances have been coming down steadily over the years, before the analytics era.
Watch a football match from the 1960s, for example, and it’s absolutely staggering how many shots are taken from hugely ambitious distances — almost none of them successful. Take this shot map from the 1966 World Cup final, as depicted by Opta’s The Analyst, and you realise how wasteful many teams were back then.
The profound change in approach over the subsequent decades was charted by The Athletic’s John Muller, looking at World Cup ‘shots per goal’ data since that 1966 tournament, which generally tallies closely with shot distance.
So while the use of analytics might have accelerated the pattern of fewer shots per goal (because teams are generally taking shots from closer to the target), that has been the general trend over the decades, albeit there was a slight rise in a couple of 21st-century tournaments.
Anyway, on to Euro 2024.
First, let’s acknowledge that this is a relatively small sample size. Only 15 games have been played over the tournament’s opening six days.
Second, let’s be realistic about the nature of the goals from outside the box.
Yes, there have been some crackers. But both Cody Gakpo’s equaliser for Netherlands against Poland and Erik Janza’s equaliser for Slovenia against Denmark took heavy deflections on their way in. Kerem Akturkoglu’s clinching goal in Turkey’s thrilling 3-1 win against Georgia in the 97th minute was into an empty net after the goalkeeper went up to try to score an equaliser, so can hardly be considered a proper long-range strike. And two of Germany’s goals in the 5-1 win over Scotland were struck from outside the box, certainly, but also were from within the ‘D’, from 19 and 22 yards respectively, so barely qualify as long-range shots.
But there have been some excellent long-range goals, including two for Romania in their 3-0 win against Ukraine, and the other two goals Turkey scored. And the interesting thing is the trajectory of the ball.
The long-range strikes have not, by and large, been absolutely thumped in, flying along in a straight line. They have instead curled or bent towards the goal astutely. And this kind of trajectory depends on the ball moving properly in the air, which is something we’ve probably come to take for granted.
Let’s go back to the graph depicting the number of goals scored from outside the box per season in the Premier League.
The two seasons with the highest tally were also the two seasons where Cristiano Ronaldo of Manchester United was smashing in goals for fun, from all manner of ranges and angles. And while Ronaldo isn’t solely responsible for that spike, it’s worth thinking about how he used to score his long-range goals.
By and large, he tended to hit the ball in a peculiar manner, slicing across or cutting over the top of it dramatically with little follow-through. The balls in use at that point in Premier League history would do unpredictable, almost ludicrous things. Ronaldo’s 2008 free-kick goal against Portsmouth, which dipped peculiarly into the net late in its flight, is probably the most famous example. But a better example was a similar free kick against Bolton Wanderers.
On that occasion, the ball seemed to take off normally, then rise up suddenly, before dipping again. And that kind of double movement is, to a certain extent, random. Ronaldo was trying to get the ball to move in the air, of course, but he wasn’t truly in control of it.
“The ball’s just doing all sorts,” said Andy Gray, commentating on that Bolton game for Sky Sports. “Up and over again, looking to move and dip and bend. Just watch the ball here!,” he said, while watching a behind-the-shot replay. “Look at that. That’s just incredible.” Incredible. But also, to a certain extent, credible.
Ronaldo strikes the ball towards goal against Bolton (Martin Rickett – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
Ronaldo mastered that era of the ball. And, given his goalscoring statistics over his career, he learned to adjust to playing with other balls too. But he largely lost the ability to score free kicks like that, because the balls have changed. Ronaldo continued using that technique but his free-kick statistics became very poor. When he did score them, it was often — like when he scored a brilliant effort in Portugal’s 3-3 draw against Spain at the 2018 World Cup — when he applied a more traditional technique, trying to manoeuvre the ball with curl.
The best free-kick taker of the modern era is James Ward-Prowse, of Southampton and now West Ham, who takes a David Beckham-esque approach. The method once favoured by Ronaldo and Chelsea’s Didier Drogba, among others, has almost vanished from the game.
The Euro 2024 ball is not a major outlier from other balls of the current era, although it appears fast through the air. But the key is that it moves in the correct manner. And, thus far, we’ve had great examples of the four different ways players can — deliberately — get a ball to move.
You can curl it conventionally with your instep, getting around the ball and moving it on a smooth trajectory. Or you can bend the ball by cutting across it, connecting with either the top or outside of your foot, bringing more dramatic movement.
And then, in terms of direction, you can apply movement to take it away from the goalkeeper and towards the corner, or you can start the ball outside the post and bring it back inside.
Nicolae Stanciu’s goal for Romania came from a ball laid back to him. He used the spin on the ball in his favour, getting under and around it and sending it curling away from the goalkeeper into the far corner.
Arda Guler’s stunner against Georgia came from a broadly similar technique — albeit left-footed — but he was getting around the ball to start it outside the post and bring the shot into the goal.
But we’ve also seen players getting reverse movement by cutting across the ball. Mert Muldur’s opener that day for Turkey saw him slicing across — and slightly underneath — the ball to make it fade away from the goalkeeper into the top corner.
Meanwhile, Nicolo Barella’s technique for Italy against Albania was broadly similar — note the standing foot, almost facing towards the near side rather than towards goal — but that was bringing the ball back in towards goal.
What we don’t see these days, is, to quote Andy Gray, the ball “doing all sorts” — moving unpredictably, moving up and down unexpectedly, or moving left and right in quick succession. That period probably explains the 2006-08 rise in long-range goals. Equally, we haven’t seen anything like World Cup 2010, where the lack of drag on the ball meant players struggled to get dip or movement, and it essentially carried on flying after it was struck (usually over the crossbar).
It remains to be seen whether this trend of long-range strikes will continue throughout Euro 2024. But it seems clear that great technique is being rewarded with great goals.
GO DEEPER
Celebrating Own Goal – Euro 2024’s leading goalscorer
(Top image: Wyscout)