The European Championship’s group stage ends Wednesday, and thus far, one goal scorer has come out of nowhere to dominate the tournament. He has notched an astonishing seven goals thus far, more than France’s Kylian Mbappé, Germany’s Niclas Füllkrug, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, and England’s Harry Kane combined. And he has scored from all over the pitch, in every sort of way: arrowed headers on set pieces, close-in finishes over a sprawling goaltender, perfectly placed shots from outside the box. He has shown the kind of finishing touch that any country would dream of.
He is, of course, Own Goal, and he is the tragicomic king of the 2024 Euros.
For the viewer, own goals—that is, goals scored when players accidentally put the ball into their own net, scoring for the other team—are glorious cringe comedy. Even the greatest athletes in the world—slick Spaniards, disciplined Germans, fierce Italians—cannot stop themselves from doing totally humiliating things on the pitch! The endless replays, the gruesome, embarrassed responses—there’s no sporting schadenfreude like it.
I don’t know why the European game is experiencing an own-goal surge. (In the previous Euros, played in 2021, there were nine own goals, the same number as had been scored in every previous tournament put together.) But I do know that I love them. I love imagining multimillionaire football players waking up at 3 in the morning and thinking about the time they bounced a ball into the wrong goal with their face.
A player can put the ball into his own net for a lot of reasons. It can happen because he has positioned himself poorly, or because he’s not paying attention, or because he stabbed at the ball at an unwise moment. Or it can just be due to miserable bad luck: You’re exactly where you should be, you do exactly what you should do, but someone else kicks the ball off your butt, and boom! You’re trapped in a nightmare.
Which of this year’s own goals have been unavoidable mistakes, and which have been truly, hideously humiliating? I’ve ranked every single one of them from least to most mortifying, on a scale of one to five Rüdigers.
Antonio Rüdiger, Germany vs. Scotland
Defending on a set piece late in the game, world-class defender Rüdiger takes an opponent’s bad touch off his head at close range. It’s hard to view this own goal as particularly mortifying. Rüdiger’s positioning was fine, he kept his man away from the ball—he couldn’t react to that header. Coming as it did in the 87th minute of a blowout, you can almost call this own goal a gift: It gave Scotland’s lovable fans something to celebrate at last. Ta, Antonio Rüdiger!
RATING: ONE RÜDIGER
Robin Hranáč, Czechia vs. Portugal
What are you gonna do? Portugal’s dynamo Rafael Leão soars over a defender and spears a header toward goal. Hranáč tries to cut it off; his goaltender dives and pushes the ball directly into Hranáč’s shin from inches away. As unavoidable as own goals get. The only player to blame here is the defender who let Leão have all that space.
RATING: ONE RÜDIGER
Riccardo Calafiori, Italy vs. Spain
A cavalcade of ifs is likely still spinning through the head of 22-year-old Riccardo Calafiori, the second-youngest Italian ever to play in the Euros. If Spain’s Nico Williams hadn’t sneaked past his defender to the end line to cross the ball … if Williams’ teammate Álvaro Morata hadn’t gotten just the slightest touch on the cross … if Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma hadn’t managed to get a glove tip on the ball—if any of those things hadn’t happened, Calafiori wouldn’t have seen the ball ricochet off his thigh and into the goal. And Italy wouldn’t have lost 1–0. Such bad luck! But on the other hand, the defender was pretty slow to turn around and defend that cross. Welcome to the big time, Riccardo Calafiori.
RATING: TWO RÜDIGERS
Klaus Gjasula, Albania vs. Croatia
Albania’s Klaus Gjasula was simply unlucky, that’s all. But then to watch Croatia’s Ante Budimir celebrate and preen afterward, when all he had done was shoot the ball directly into a defender’s expertly placed legs from, like, 3 feet away? Horrible. This is a truly dispiriting own goal to endure; you’ve done everything right, legitimately making a terrific defensive play, and you and your teammate have to share the embarrassment as an opponent dances in your nightmares.
RATING: THREE RÜDIGERS
Donyell Malen, Netherlands vs. Austria
A rough one. Austria’s on a break; Alexander Prass has the ball on the left wing, and his teammate Marko Arnautović is wide open at the top of the box and screaming for a pass. Donyell Malen, a Dutch forward, is hauling ass, running straight back toward his own goal to help out. He sees the cross coming; he slides to break it up; he smashes the ball right past his goalkeeper. Of course Malen did the right thing, but in the wake of the Dutch team’s narrow defeat at Austria’s hands, he’ll spend the next week thinking: Why wasn’t I just a little bit faster?
RATING: THREE RÜDIGERS
Maximilian Wöber, Austria vs. France
Sure, we’ve all been mesmerized by Kylian Mbappé turning the corner and blowing past a defender. But we’re not a center back on a European national team! For some reason, Maximilian Wöber tries to head Mbappé’s cross while facing his own net; the resulting shot is, perversely, one of the sweetest goals you’ll ever see, right down into the far corner. Luckily for Wöber, Austria still won its group, thanks in large part to the previous entry on this list. Still, this was a bad one.
RATING: FOUR RÜDIGERS
Samet Akaydin, Turkey vs. Portugal
A world-class own goal, truly one of the most spectacular I’ve ever seen, rivaling Spain’s masterpiece in the 2021 Euros. It arrived so unexpectedly—while Portugal’s João Cancelo and Cristiano Ronaldo were yelling at each other about a missed connection—that the live game camera didn’t even capture it. Samet Akaydin picks up Cancelo’s poor pass and, without looking, passes it back to his goalkeeper … who’s much too close to him. Everything about this own goal is art: Akaydin’s supreme confidence as he executes the no-look; the goalie’s panicked sprint; a defender’s just-too-late slide in an attempt to clear the ball; Cancelo and Ronaldo so busy remonstrating they barely notice what has happened. As the defender and goalkeeper crash together into the back of the net, Akaydin can only watch, all expression drained from his face. Congratulations to Own Goal for scoring the goal of the tournament so far.
RATING: FIVE RÜDIGERS
