Goals: we all love to see them when watching games of football, while the strategies of many punters are also often predicted on there being three or more goals in an encounter, or both teams scoring.
The 2023/24 season across much of Europe was Valhalla for goals backers – a trend that, somewhat surprisingly, continued into EURO 2024.
It was a surprise in the sense that major tournament games can occasionally be conservative, cagey affairs, but EURO 2024 did away with that notion with plenty of high-octane action.
So is the appetite for goals at the elite level here to stay?
Banging Them In
Of course, overarching trends don’t always reveal what is going to happen in an individual game.
But those placing a EURO 2024 bet were often well rewarded when backing either Over 2.5 Goals, Both Teams to Score, or both.
And many EURO 2024 tips columns soon latched onto the idea, as did the betting public – between Thursday, June 20, and Wednesday, June 26, Over 2.5 Goals was an odds-on price in 14 of the 21 games played, while Both Teams to Score was a similarly heavy favourite in 17/21.
GOAL!
— UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) June 19, 2024
Croatia 2-2 Albania (Gjasula 90'+5)#EURO2024 | #CROALB pic.twitter.com/5x6c5X9H6b
It was a pattern that rewarded punters nicely. In the opening 15 games of the tournament, a very healthy 42 goals were scored. Specifically, they saw Over 2.5 Goals in 9/15 and both teams found the net in 9/15 also – a handsome percentage of 60%.
You don’t need to sift through the stats at other major international tournaments to know that such a percentage is much higher than what would be expected. So it seems that one of the key betting trends of the 2023/24 season has continued into the summer…
It’s Raining Goals
For context, in the Premier League campaign just gone a mammoth 65% of games breached the Over 2.5 Goals line so beloved by punters.
That was matched by a Both Teams to Score return of 62%, with the average number of goals netted per EPL game in 2023/24 at 3.28. The total number of goals – 1,246 – saw the Premier League 2023/24 season set an all-time record.
Newcastle have scored 13 goals in their two games against Sheffield United this season, the most one side has ever scored against another in a single campaign in the competition's history:
— Squawka (@Squawka) April 27, 2024
◉ Sheff Utd 0-8 Newcastle
◉ Newcastle 5-1 Sheff Utd
Confirming their relegation with… pic.twitter.com/37mGtVJaVm
Those numbers may mean little to you in isolation, but consider them in the context of seasons gone by: in 2023/23, for example, the Premier League season saw just 53% of games witness three or more goals, BTTS landed in 52% and the average number of goals scored per game was 2.85.
In 2021/22, those respective numbers were 54% (Over 2.5 Goals), 50% (Both Teams to Score), and 2.82 (average goals per game).
This wasn’t a phenomenon exclusive to English football, either. The German Bundesliga also witnessed an increase in its goal-per-game ratio to 3.22, while in Spain’s La Liga the average number of goals per game increased from 2.51 in 2022/23 to 2.64 in 2023/24. There was a smaller but still noticeable, increase in the number of goals recorded in Italy’s Serie A for the same period.
While the trend isn’t universal – goal tallies in France’s Ligue 1 actually fell year-on-year in 2023/24, the overriding theme is that more goals than ever before are being scored in European football.
Why? Who knows: perhaps the current tactical trends of possession football, high presses, and attacking full backs are playing their part. Whatever the reason, punters are well advised to follow the pattern.
