UEFA Euro 2000
The 2000 UEFA European Football Championship, also known as Euro 2000, was the 11th UEFA European Championship, a football tournament held every four years and organised by UEFA, the sport's governing body in Europe.
The finals tournament was played between 10 June and 2 July 2000, and co-hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands, the first time the tournament had been held in more than one nation. Spain and Austria also bid to host the event. The finals tournament was contested by 16 nations; with the exception of the hosts, Belgium and the Netherlands, the finalists had to go through a qualifying tournament to reach the final stage. France won the tournament by defeating Italy 2–1 in the final, via a golden goal. Germany were defending champions but were eliminated in the Group Stage.
The finals saw the first major UEFA competition contested in the King Baudouin Stadium since the events of the 1985 European Cup final and the Heysel Stadium disaster, with the opening game being played in the rebuilt stadium.
A high-scoring championship with many exciting matches and an elite standard of play, Euro 2000 is often labelled by football writers as one of the greatest international tournaments of all time.
Bid process
Belgium and the Netherlands were selected as co-hosts on 14 July 1995 by the UEFA Executive Committee at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.Hooliganism concerns
was a significant problem in the Netherlands in the 1990s, especially the fierce rivalry between Ajax and Feyenoord. There were concerns that hooliganism would overshadow the finals. Many instances of violence occurred, including several football riots in Rotterdam between 1995 and 1999, which would host the Euro 2000 final. One of the most infamous incidents was the Battle of Beverwijk in 1997. Although the violence is normally associated with domestic clubs, there were concerns that it could attach to the Dutch national team.Violence did eventually occur during the Euro 2000 finals, albeit not involving the Dutch team. On 17 June, 174 England fans were arrested in Brussels, Belgium, following violence with Germans and local Turkish groups ahead of an England v Germany match.
Summary
One of the biggest surprises of the tournament was Portugal, winning Group A with three wins, including a 3–0 victory against Germany, with Sérgio Conceição scoring a hat-trick, and a 3–2 victory against England, in which they came back from 2–0 down. Romania was the other qualifier from the group, beating England with a late penalty in their last group game.Belgium had a surprise exit in the group stage, winning the tournament's first game against Sweden, but losing to Turkey and Italy. They finished third in Group B, behind Italy and Turkey. The other co-host and favourite, the Netherlands, progressed as expected from Group D, along with World Cup winners France. The Netherlands won the group, by beating France in their last group match. Also in Group D, Denmark's three losses with eight goals conceded and none scored set a new record for the worst team performance in the group stages of a Euros. Group C was memorable for the match between FR Yugoslavia and Spain. Spain needed a win to ensure progression, but found themselves trailing 3–2 after Slobodan Komljenović scored in the 75th minute. The Spanish side rescued their tournament by scoring twice in injury time to record a 4–3 victory. FR Yugoslavia managed to go through as well, despite losing because Norway and Slovenia played to a draw.
Italy and Portugal maintained their perfect records in the quarter-finals, beating Romania and Turkey, respectively, and the Netherlands started a goal-avalanche against FR Yugoslavia, winning 6–1. Spain fell 2–1 to France; Raúl missed a late penalty that ended Spanish hopes.
Italy eliminated the Netherlands in the semi-finals, despite going down to ten men and facing two penalty kicks. Italian goalkeeper Francesco Toldo, who had been drafted into the starting XI as Gianluigi Buffon missed the tournament through injury, made two saves in the penalty shootout – apart from his penalty save in normal time – to carry the Italians to the final.
In the other semi-final, Portugal lost in extra time to France after Zinedine Zidane converted a controversial penalty kick. Several Portuguese players challenged the awarding of the penalty for a handball and were given lengthy suspensions for shoving the referee. France won the tournament, defeating Italy 2–1 in the final with a golden goal by David Trezeguet after equalising with a last-minute goal, and became the first team to win the European championship while being world champion.
In Britain, Match of the Day named Stefano Fiore's goal against Belgium the Goal of the Tournament, ahead of Patrick Kluivert's against France and Zinedine Zidane's against Spain.
Qualification
Qualification for the tournament took place throughout 1998 and 1999. Forty-nine teams were divided into nine groups and each played the others in their group, on a home-and-away basis. The winner of each group and the best runner-up qualified automatically for the final tournament. The eight other runners-up played an additional set of play-off matches to determine the last four qualifiers. Belgium and the Netherlands automatically qualified for the tournament as co-hosts. Notably, this was the only European Championship Belgium appeared in between 1984 and 2016.As of 2024, this was the only time Norway qualified for the European Championship finals, the last time they qualified for a major tournament until the 2026 FIFA World Cup as well as the only time that Croatia failed to qualify for the European Championship finals since gaining independence.
Qualified teams
Final draw
The finals draw took place 15:00 CET on 12 December 1999, at the Brussels Expo in Belgium; and was streamed live on UEFA's official website.The composition of pots 1 to 4 was based on the teams' UEFA national team coefficient ranking at the end of 1999, with the exception of pot 1 automatically top seeding Germany as holders along with co-hosts Belgium and Netherlands.
Prior to the draw, the seeded teams in Pot 1 were assigned positions: Germany to A1, Belgium to B1, Spain to C1, and the Netherlands to D1. Teams were drawn consecutively from Pots 2 to 4 into a group, with each team then being assigned a specific position. The draw resulted in the following groups:
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