PARIS - A goal-rich European football season suggests Euro 2012 could be a high-scoring tournament, despite the likely dominance of apparently conservative single-striker formations.
PARIS - A goal-rich European football season suggests Euro 2012 could be a high-scoring tournament, despite the likely dominance of apparently conservative single-striker formations.
The 2011-12 campaign was one of the most prolific in the modern history of the European game.
Barcelona and Real Madrid both smashed through the 100-goal barrier in La Liga, the Catalans amassing 114 goals and champions Madrid plundering 121 to obliterate the 107-goal season record set by John Toshack's Madrid side in 1989-90.
There were freak scorelines in the English Premier League - notably Manchester United's 8-2 annihilation of Arsenal - and the goals-per-game ratio climbed in all five of Europe's major leagues except the already high-scoring German Bundesliga.
The continent's leading goalscorers sent records tumbling, and not just Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who claimed 96 league goals between them.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar was the first player to notch 29 goals in Germany since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981, while his Dutch teammate Robin van Persie became only the fourth player to reach the 30-goal mark in England since 2000. Despite a steadily diminishing goals-per-game ratio at recent World Cups (from 2.71 in 1994 to 2.27 in SA in 2010), the goals do not appear to be drying up in the European Championship.
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Euro teams busy with final tweaks
WARSAW - With the tournament curtain-raiser just five days away, the 16 teams competing in Euro 2012 were fine-tuning their preparations or packing their bags to head to co-hosts Poland and Ukraine yesterday.
Group A teams Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Greece were already at their base camps, with co-hosts Poland due to take on Greece in the capital Warsaw and Russia set to play the Czechs in the southwestern city of Wroclaw on Friday. Group B teams Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal were due to arrive in Poland yesterday.
Greece jetted in to Warsaw on Sunday, with the pilot expressing the hope of a nation that is in desperate need of some good news, after months of financial and political turmoil.
"I wish you a good tournament and, when you step onto the pitch, may your eyes see only sky blue and white," UEFA.com reported the flight's captain as saying. "We Greeks need it."
The Greeks were surprise winners of Euro 2004 in Portugal and defender Jose Holebas said that no one should write them off this time round.
"In football, as in life, you never say never," he was quoted as saying by Real Sports. "Everybody saw what happened this season in the Champions League."
Euro goal fest looms - High-scoring season points to bumper championship
PARIS - A goal-rich European football season suggests Euro 2012 could be a high-scoring tournament, despite the likely dominance of apparently conservative single-striker formations.
PARIS - A goal-rich European football season suggests Euro 2012 could be a high-scoring tournament, despite the likely dominance of apparently conservative single-striker formations.
The 2011-12 campaign was one of the most prolific in the modern history of the European game.
Barcelona and Real Madrid both smashed through the 100-goal barrier in La Liga, the Catalans amassing 114 goals and champions Madrid plundering 121 to obliterate the 107-goal season record set by John Toshack's Madrid side in 1989-90.
There were freak scorelines in the English Premier League - notably Manchester United's 8-2 annihilation of Arsenal - and the goals-per-game ratio climbed in all five of Europe's major leagues except the already high-scoring German Bundesliga.
The continent's leading goalscorers sent records tumbling, and not just Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who claimed 96 league goals between them.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar was the first player to notch 29 goals in Germany since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981, while his Dutch teammate Robin van Persie became only the fourth player to reach the 30-goal mark in England since 2000. Despite a steadily diminishing goals-per-game ratio at recent World Cups (from 2.71 in 1994 to 2.27 in SA in 2010), the goals do not appear to be drying up in the European Championship.
.
Euro teams busy with final tweaks
WARSAW - With the tournament curtain-raiser just five days away, the 16 teams competing in Euro 2012 were fine-tuning their preparations or packing their bags to head to co-hosts Poland and Ukraine yesterday.
Group A teams Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Greece were already at their base camps, with co-hosts Poland due to take on Greece in the capital Warsaw and Russia set to play the Czechs in the southwestern city of Wroclaw on Friday. Group B teams Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal were due to arrive in Poland yesterday.
Greece jetted in to Warsaw on Sunday, with the pilot expressing the hope of a nation that is in desperate need of some good news, after months of financial and political turmoil.
"I wish you a good tournament and, when you step onto the pitch, may your eyes see only sky blue and white," UEFA.com reported the flight's captain as saying. "We Greeks need it."
The Greeks were surprise winners of Euro 2004 in Portugal and defender Jose Holebas said that no one should write them off this time round.
"In football, as in life, you never say never," he was quoted as saying by Real Sports. "Everybody saw what happened this season in the Champions League."
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