Euro 2024 has had its fair share of surprises so far.
Despite Germany thrashing Scotland 5-1 in the opening fixture, followed by Switzerland beating Hungary 3-1 and Spain brushing Croatia aside with a 3-0 win the following day, the average goals per match is actually slightly lower than the average in the previous three European championships.
What looked like a goalscoring tournament for the ages, stabilised at 81 goals scored at the Euro 2024 group stages, resulting in an average of 2.25 goals per match, compared to 2.32 in the previous three championships combined.
Additionally, if we compare Euro 2024 to our analysis of all three Euro championships between 2012 and 2020, we see that we are on track to beat the amount of own goals scored (seven so far, compared to 11 at Euro 2020) and end up as the championship with most 0-0 score lines (four so far, compared to the nine scoreless matches between Euro 2012 and 2020).
But there have been bigger surprises than that at Euro 2024. Looking at you England, Georgia and all the unlikely topscorers...
Toothless favourites
Two of the biggest favourites going into Euro 2024 were England and France, and they have both been disappointing in front of goal, to say the least.
They can call upon the likes of Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham, Antoine Griezmann, Bukayo Saka and Ousmane Dembele, yet the two teams have only scored two goals each in the group stages.
Belgium is another team that has struggled, also only scoring two goals across their three group stage matches. Just like France, this meant that they surprisingly finished second place in their group, behind Romania.
The numbers suggest the reason for this is that both France and Belgium are wasteful in front of goal.
France had an Expected Goals (xG) of 5.7, yet only scored two. Belgium, with the majority of xG held by Romelu Lukaku (1.7), only scored two goals while being expected to score 4.2 (none by Lukaku), according to FBref.
That being said, the luxury of these star-studded teams, like England and France, is that they can underwhelm and still make it through the group stage by beating weaker sides.
Now that they are in the knockout stages, it only takes four good performances - and maybe a bit of luck - to win the whole thing.
Second best have impressed the most
While big nations such as Spain and Germany have looked impressive so far, a lot of weaker teams have surprised us - and their opponents.
Austria and Romania won their groups ahead of France and Belgium, respectively.
While Türkiye and Georgia both qualified from group F with some tantalising football, scoring five and four goals, respectively.
Georgia deserves an extra mention, ranked 74th on the FIFA rankings, as one of the surprises of Euro 2024, as they beat Portugal 2-0 in the final group stage match to squeeze through to the knockout stage.
There were worries ahead of Euro 2016, when UEFA changed the format to allow an additional eight teams to qualify for the group stages, that the quality of the championship would decrease with weaker teams included.
It is difficult to argue that that is true now, as some of the biggest nations, such as France and Belgium, lose out on the top spot in the groups to Austria and Romania.
This is backed up by numbers too, as the average points difference between first place and last in the group stage at Euro 2024 was the lowest, compared to all championships since Euro 1996, according to UEFA.
The unlikely topscorers
Five out of the seven players who have scored the most goals since Euro 2012 are playing at Euro 2024.
Those are Cristiano Ronaldo (11 goals), Griezmann (seven), Morata (seven), Lukaku (six) and Robert Lewandowski (six).
However, only Morata and Lewandowski have so far scored a goal at Euro 2024. Surprisingly, Ronaldo, despite Portugal having scored five goals, hasn't found the net yet.
The top scorer of Euro 2024, at the moment, is Georgia's Georges Mikautadze with three goals, followed by Niclas Füllkrug - who hasn't started a match yet and has only played 75 minutes of football - Jamal Musiala, Cody Gakpo, Slovakia's Ivan Schranz, and Romania's Răzvan Marin on two.
The biggest teams, such as England, France and Belgium, as well as profiles like Kane, Bellingham, Mbappe and Ronaldo, have not dominated the Euros as expected.
Instead, Mikautadze and teams such as Austria, Romania and Türkiye have been welcome surprises and filled the void left by the favourites so far.
