This tournament has had more than its fair share of late drama.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Euro 2016, it’s that you should never leave a game early.
That’s because as of Friday afternoon, there had been more goals in the final five minutes of matches than there had been in the whole of the first half put together.
After Italy’s 1-0 win over Sweden which Eder won for the Azzurri in the 88th minute,and Czech late equalizer at the 90th minutes,there had been 12 goals in the last five minutes compared to 10 in the first half.
England, of course, have been on both sides of the equation, surrendering a stoppage-time leveller to Russia in their first match before Daniel Sturridge sunk Wales in the 91st minute in Lens.
If you’re looking for reasons why this has been the case, the expanded format may be at least part of the reason.
With more smaller nations taking part than usual, there has been a lot of organised, deep defending, with teams working hard to break them down – and eventually doing so, as in France’s win over Albania.
Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that the period described as the last five minutes isn’t actually five minutes at all because it also contains stoppage time.
With an average of four minutes of added time played at the end of each game this summer, that period is actually nine minutes long.
And of the 12 goals scored, seven of them have come in stoppage time including today's Czech equalizer against Croatia.
Nevertheless, that’s still an awful lot of late goals – so no leaving early to avoid the traffic.
While the proportion of late goals has been striking in France, it’s worth pointing out that it’s not as much of an anomaly as you might think.
In fact, over the last four European Championships, late goals have been pretty common and influential.
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