Euro 2020: Analytical trends from the tournament – data analysis

After a month of constant football viewing, we can collectively catch our breath.

With the days equally split between Euro 2020 and Copa América, weve seen football go to Rome and Argentina break their 28-year title drought.

With all the games in the book, we have a full data set to examine the tournaments.

In this data analysis, we turn our attention to the Euros. Well look at how the teams got their goals, offer analysis of attacking statistics, study defensive metrics and break down set piece themes. All statistics and images in this data analysis come from the InStat Euro 2020 Report.

How they scored

Our first section will cover goals. Specifically, we want to see which teams had the greatest and least success, the shooting locations, duration of goal-scoring moves, the average number of passes and the types of goals.

The first image from the InStat Euros Report gives us each nations goals conceded, goals scored and the goal zones/shooting locations. One of the key takeaways from this image is that the average goal was scored from approximately 8 m out. Of all goals scored in the tournament, 64% came from within 12 yards of the goal and 87% from inside the box.

Next, we have possibly the most interesting image from the report. The first column shows the duration of goal-scoring attacks. Moving from the top down, the first team on the list that did not make it to the knockout rounds is Poland, claiming the 12th position with an average of 22 seconds of possession on goal-scoring attacks. That gives us a nice break in the top half versus the bottom half of the list. In that top half, we have the possession dominant nations, most of whom topped the favourites list. Polands 22 seconds per goal-scoring attack represents the bottom of the top 12 while Belgiums 41.5 seconds represents the highest mark.

Meanwhile, the bottom half