Euro 1992 in football: results

The European Football Championship is one of the largest tournaments held between teams of national teams. Bigger than him only the World Cup. It has the right to participate teams from all over the world, while the European Championship, as you can understand by its name, is limited exclusively to the countries of the European continent.

In this article we will talk about the Euro 1992 - a tournament that turned out to be extremely unusual due to some details of the qualification, and also because of the unexpected performance of one of the countries that no one particularly expected. Note that this championship in format differs from what the European Championship looks like today. For Euro-1992 there were only two groups, of which two teams came directly to the semi-final, a completely different scheme compared to the recently completed similar tournament of 2016, in which there were 6 groups, and the playoff stage began with 1 / 8 finals. Well, it's time to take a look at how this championship was going.

Qualified teams

As everyone knows, to get into the final part of the tournament, teams need to qualify - the same was the case with Euro 1992. European teams were divided into seven qualifying groups, from each of which the team that won the first place went to the final. That's how the finals were five teams - France, Scotland, Germany, Holland and England. But what about the other three participants? How did they end up on Euro 1992? In fact, there is no big secret in this, but each team had its own reasons, which should be written in more detail.

Sweden

So, the first team that was in the final part of the Euro-1992 tournament in football without qualifying is Sweden. The thing is that this championship was held in this country. The Swedes argued for the right to hold the European Championship with Spain, which, in principle, had more chances from a sporting point of view. However, the Spaniards in 1992 were given the right to hold several major sports tournaments, including the Olympic Games, so it was Sweden that got the right to hold the Euro-1992 in football. The national team of this country traditionally did not need to pass the qualifying round to be in the final part of the tournament. The national team got a ticket there automatically.

Team CIS

In this case, the story is much more interesting and unusual. How did the CIS team get to the Euro 1992? Why has not anyone heard of her before? Moreover, the CIS national team did not even participate in the qualifying qualifying tournament - how did it end up in Sweden?

The whole point is that just for this period the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred . The national team of the USSR at all times was very strong. In 1960, she even won the first ever European Football Championship. And, naturally, she took first place in her qualifying group, which provided her with an exit to the play-off stage. But, unfortunately, in the period between the holding of the qualifying and final tournaments the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated, and by the beginning of the 1992 European Championship in Sweden the countries that had gained independence had not yet managed to organize their sports, in particular football, activities.

Therefore, it was decided to send athletes from countries that were previously part of the Soviet Union to the European Championships under the flag of the CIS. Thus, at the qualifying tournament and at Euro-1992, the compositions were practically the same - except for a few countries that refused to expel their players: they were the Baltic powers, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Team Denmark

Well, one more country that deserves special attention is Denmark. Euro-1992 is a tournament that could have developed quite differently, because the Danes in their qualifying group took only second place. The first team won Yugoslavia - but she was disqualified. This happened because the war started in the country, and therefore it was decided to remove the team from participating in the European Championships, and instead of it the team went to the tournament in Denmark, which otherwise would have remained out of work. As it turned out, this decision greatly influenced the results of Euro-1992.

Well, with the qualification everything is clear, now you know all the eight teams that were in the final part of the competition. It's time to consider in detail how the main tournament was held and what surprises he presented to the fans.

Group A

The selection of Euro-1992 was left behind, and now you can find out what happened in the final part of the European Championship. As it was said earlier, eight teams were divided into two parts: from each in the playoffs were the two best teams.

In group A - the Swedes, the Danes, the French and the English. For the Swedes, it was a debut performance, while the British and the Danes were in the final stage of the European Championships before this three times. The French had in this column a slightly less impressive figure - twice, but they could boast of having won the year before last, that is, the 1984 European Championship. And so everyone was pretty surprised by the result of the opening match, in which the French could not beat the hosts of the tournament - the game ended with a score of 1: 1.

Danes, in turn, broke up peace with the British. In the second round, the latter also played a zero draw with the French, while the Swedes sensationally defeated the Danes and practically guaranteed themselves a place in the playoffs. Really amazing was the third round, in which 2: 1 Danes and the Swedes defeated the French and the British, respectively.

Thus, the Swedes, from whom no one expected any impressive performances, withdrew from the group from the first place, while Denmark, which could not even qualify, was in the semifinals.

Group B

What happened in the second group? Here there were no surprises - the Dutch and the Germans were favorites, although the latter had some uncertainty. After all, at the World Championship in 1990 , the strongest team of West Germany ceased to exist - there was a reunion of the two halves of the country, as a result of which the European team in 1992 went to the German team. However, this practically did not affect the speeches of the Germans, while the disintegration of the Soviet Union greatly influenced the national team, and no one had expected its greatness from it.

For the Scots, this tournament was the first in history, but they could not create such a sensation as the Swedes. In the first match they lost to the Dutch team, while the two converted teams failed to reveal the winner. In the second round, the Germans gathered with the forces and beat the Scots 2-0, and the Dutch, as well as the German team, tied with the CIS team. And only the last round put all the points above the "and". The Dutch defeated the Germans with a score of 3: 1, securing a way out of the group from the first place, and suddenly shot the Scots rescued the Germans from the failure, defeating the national team of the CIS with a score of 3: 0.

First semifinal

As a result, two semi-final pairs were formed - the winner of the first group played with the team that took the second place in the second, while the winner of the second opposed the second place of the first.

The first was the semifinal between the national teams of Germany and Sweden. Already on the 11th minute, Hassler opened the scoring, leading the German team forward, but the first half was not so bright, so for the break the opponents and left when the score was 1-0 in favor of the Germans. The second half began much more vigorously - in the 59th minute the advantage of the German team doubled Riedle, but almost immediately after that the Swedes earned a penalty, which sold Brolin. The match was drawing to a close, when Riedle, before the final whistle, put an end to this confrontation - the pill could sweeten only Kenneth Andersson's goal, scored in just sixty seconds. The match ended with a score of 3: 2 - the German national team went to the Euro-1992 finals.

Second semifinal

The second match of the playoffs was no less dramatic than the first. It was attended by the Dutch national team and the national team of Denmark. Euro-1992 was remembered by what the latter could achieve - everyone was amazed at the fact that they were able to leave the group, but the team did not stop there.

Already at the very beginning of the meeting, Henrik Larsen opened the scoring, leading the Denmark team forward. The Dutch were able to answer already in the 23rd minute, when Dennis Bergkamp equalized the score. The restored balance did not last long - after a while Larsson designed the double, again taking his team forward. It would seem that the sensation is already close, and the Danes may be in the final of the European Championship - but before the final whistle Frank Rijkaard unexpectedly equalized the account by transferring the game into overtime.

In extra time the goals were not scored, so the time came for a series of penalty shoot-outs. It was during this and the main sensation occurred when the goalkeeper Dane Peter Schmeichel parried the blow of Marco van Basten, thereby withdrawing his team to the finals.

The final

It would seem that the final favorite was the German national team, which won the World Cup two years ago, and reached the semi-final in the last European Championship in 1988. However, in reality everything turned out quite differently - already in the 19th minute, Jon Jensen scored a goal, leading the Danes forward. Such an account lasted an hour on the scoreboard. After this time, Kim Wilfort doubled the advantage of the Danes, thereby completely removing the Germans from the game. The match ended and it was a real sensation, because the tournament was won by a team that, in fact, did not qualify and was not supposed to take part in it.

Top scorers

As you can see, the maximum number of matches that footballers could hold at this tournament is 5, that is, three group matches, a semi-final and a final. Therefore, it was extremely unlikely that in the end it would be possible to single out a specific winner by the number of goals. And it happened - at this tournament the title of the best scorer was divided among themselves by the representatives of four countries that came to the semifinals. Three goals were scored by Swede Henrik Larsen, Dane Thomas Brolin, Dutchman Denis Bergkamp and German Karl-Heinz Riedle. According to modern rules, the Golden Boot would have gotten to the player who spent less time on the field during the tournament, but then this rule did not work, so all four attackers divided the award among themselves.

Team tournament

The best goalkeeper of the tournament was expected to be Peter Schmeichel. The defensive line consisted of two Frenchmen, Jocelyn Angloma and Laurent Blanc, and two Germans, Andreas Bremet and Jürgen Kohler. In the midfield, there were also two German players, Stefan Effenberg and Thomas Hessler, as well as Dutchman Rud Gullit and Dane Brian Laudrup. In the attack, two Dutchmen suddenly appeared, and the first was Dennis Bergkamp, who became one of the owners of the Golden Boot. But a couple he was not one of the remaining three top scorers, and his team-mate Marco van Basten. It was these players who were recognized as the best at the last tournament, which definitely turned out to be one of the most sensational in the history of world football and was remembered for a long time by the fans.