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 (formerly the Heysel 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.

With many high scoring games and a positive 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

Football hooliganism 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.

thumb|left|France and Italy before the final on 2 July

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. with the exception of pot 1 automatically top seeding Germany as holders along with co-hosts Belgium and Netherlands.

The draw resulted in the following groups:

|- valign=top

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Group A

!width=120|Team

| align=center|

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Group B

!width=120|Team

| align=center|

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Group C

!width=120|Team

| align=center|

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Group D

!width=120|Team

| align=center|

Venues

Capacity figures are those for matches at UEFA Euro 2000 and are not necessarily the total capacity that the stadium is capable of holding.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" | Belgium

! colspan="2" |Netherlands

! Brussels

! Bruges

!Amsterdam

!Rotterdam

| King Baudouin Stadium

| Jan Breydel Stadium

|Amsterdam Arena

|Feijenoord Stadion

| Capacity: 50,000

| Capacity: 30,000

| Capacity: 52,000

| Capacity: 51,000

| 200px

|alt=|200x200px

|200px

|alt=|200x200px

! colspan="2" |

!Liège

!Charleroi

!Eindhoven

!Arnhem

|Stade Maurice Dufrasne

|Stade du Pays de Charleroi

|Philips Stadion

|GelreDome

| Capacity: 30,000

| Capacity: 33,000

| Capacity: 30,000

|200px

|alt=|200x200px

Team base camps

The 16 national teams each stayed in their own "team base camp" during the tournament.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

! Team

! Base camp

! class="unsortable" |

| Belgium

| Lichtaart

| Czech Republic

| Knokke-Heist

| Denmark

| Brunssum

| England

| Spa/Waterloo

| FR Yugoslavia

| Edegem

| France

| Genval

| Germany

| Vaals

| Italy

| Grobbendonk

| Netherlands

| Hoenderloo

| Norway

| Knokke-Heist

| Portugal

| Ermelo

| Romania

| Grimbergen/Arnhem

| Slovenia

| Soestduinen

| Spain

| Tegelen

| Sweden

| Oisterwijk

| Turkey

| Delden

Squads

Each national team had to submit a squad of 22 players, three of whom had to be goalkeepers.

Match officials

On 15 February 2000, UEFA appointed 12 referees, 16 assistant referees and four fourth officials for the competition, including a referee and an assistant referee from the Confederation of African Football. The event saw assistant referees being allowed to intervene an ongoing game, in particular to help the match official apply the 10-metre rule when deciding free-kicks – as well as warn the referee instantly if he had booked or ejected the wrong player, something that was not possible in previous tournaments. Also, fourth officials were given a larger role in assisting to take command of the match if any decisions are gone unnoticed by the referee or an assistant referee.

{| class="wikitable"

!Referees

!Assistant referees

!Fourth officials

| Günter Benkö

| Yuri Dupanov

| Michel Piraux

| Kim Milton Nielsen

| Roland Van Nylen

| Kyros Vassaras

| Gamal Al-Ghandour

| Ivan Lekov

| Terje Hauge

| Graham Poll

| Jens Larsen

| Ľuboš Micheľ

| Gilles Veissière

| Philip Sharp

| Markus Merk

| Jacques Poudevigne

| Pierluigi Collina

| Kurt Ertl

| Dick Jol

| Sergio Zuccolini

| Vítor Melo Pereira

| Dramane Dante

| Hugh Dallas

| Emanuel Zammit

| José María García-Aranda

| Jaap Pool

| Anders Frisk

| Eddie Foley

| Urs Meier

| Nicolae Grigorescu

| Igor Šramka

| Carlos Martín Nieto

| Leif Lindberg

| Turgay Güdü

Group stage

thumb|upright=1.6|UEFA Euro 2000 finalists and their results

The teams finishing in the top two positions in each of the four groups progress to the quarter-finals, while the bottom two teams in each group were eliminated.

All times are local, CEST (UTC+2).

Tiebreakers

If two or more teams finished level on points after completion of the group matches, the following tie-breakers were used to determine the final ranking:

greater number of points in the matches between the teams in question;
greater goal difference in matches between the teams in question;
greater number of goals scored in matches between the teams in question;
greater goal difference in all group games;
greater number of goals scored in all group games;
higher coefficient derived from Euro 2000 and 1998 World Cup qualifiers (points obtained divided by number of matches played);
fair play conduct in Euro 2000;
drawing of lots.

Group A

----

Group B

----

Group C

----

Group D

----

Knockout stage

The knockout stage was a single-elimination tournament with each round eliminating the losers.

{| class="wikitable"

!style="width:25%"| Goalkeepers

!style="width:25%"| Defenders

!style="width:25%"| Midfielders

!style="width:25%"| Forwards

|- style="vertical-align:top"

| Fabien Barthez Francesco Toldo

| Laurent Blanc Marcel Desailly Lilian Thuram Fabio Cannavaro Paolo Maldini Alessandro Nesta Frank de Boer

| Patrick Vieira Zinedine Zidane Demetrio Albertini Edgar Davids Rui Costa Luís Figo Pep Guardiola

| Savo Milošević Thierry Henry Francesco Totti Patrick Kluivert Nuno Gomes Raúl

Golden Boot

Patrick Kluivert (5 goals)
Savo Milošević (5 goals)

UEFA Player of the Tournament

Zinedine Zidane

|1||style="text-align:left;"|||14.4

|2||style="text-align:left;"|||13.2

|3||style="text-align:left;"| ||10.2

|5||style="text-align:left;"| ||7.8

|9||style="text-align:left;"| ||5.4

|13||style="text-align:left;"| ||4.8

A sum of CHF120 million was awarded to the 16 qualified teams in the competition. France, the winners of the tournament, received a total prize money of CHF14.4 million. However, no connections were found and the Football Association of FR Yugoslavia later received their money with an additional bonus.

Marketing

Slogan and theme song

The slogan of the competition was "Football without frontiers". "Campione 2000" by E-Type was the official anthem of the event.

Match ball

thumb|The Adidas Terrestra Silverstream, the match ball used at the tournament.

The Adidas Terrestra Silverstream was unveiled as the official match ball of the competition on 13 December 1999 at Constant Vanden Stock Stadium, Anderlecht's home arena by Alessandro Del Piero, Edwin van der Sar, Zinedine Zidane and Luc Nilis.

Mascot

thumb|Benelucky, the Euro 2000 [[UEFA European Championship mascot|mascot]]

The official mascot for the tournament was Benelucky (a pun on Benelux), a lion-devil hybrid with its mane having the flag colours of both host nations. The lion is the national football emblem of the Netherlands and a devil is the emblem of Belgium (the team being nicknamed "the Red Devils").

Sponsorships

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Official Sponsors

!Official Suppliers