Physical demands of EURO 2024: performance trends and takeaways
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
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New UEFA tournament report provides detailed analysis of players' physical performance.
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The new UEFA EURO 2024 Physical Analysis report provides a detailed investigation into teams' and players' performance during last year’s tournament.
The report examines key metrics such as distance covered, sprint speeds and overall physical trends in the context of technical and tactical data. It aims to help coaches, analysts and sports scientists understand the physical demands of the tournament, compare performances across teams and identify modern footballing trends.
"This report helps coaches get precise insight into team and individual performance parameters which can be used for creating bespoke training programmes during the preparation period and tournament."
Importance of sprints
France’s Kylian Mbappé recorded the tournament’s top speed with 36.7 km/h. Spain’s Nico Williams, who scored Spain’s opening goal in their 2-1 victory over England in the final, was one of three players who recorded the second top speed of 35.9 km/h, alongside Netherlands defender Micky van de Ven and Slovenia’s Benjamin Šeško.
Although time spent in these higher speed zones accounts for a small proportion of the overall distance covered by a player in a game, sprinting can be vital to important match actions and is the most physically demanding action performed by players.
Understanding the peak demands of physical performance
Preparing players to meet the highest physical demands that arise in a match is a key theme running throughout the report. Notable findings in terms of peak demands include:
- physical differences between positions become more apparent at the highest speeds;
- substitutes performed more high-speed running per minute than starters;
- peak effort occurs more frequently at the start of both the first and second half of matches, becoming increasingly concentrated towards the end of matches.
Supporting practitioners and coaches to enhance player development, training methods and match preparation
The EURO 2024 Physical Analysis report aims to support coaches in their work, and it is hoped that the findings will help inform national associations' coach education programmes for the benefit of the game across Europe.
"By analysing physical performance trends, the report helps coaches and sports scientists refine conditioning programs to meet the evolving demands of elite football," explains report author Dr Stacey Emmonds. "The report can also be used by coach educators in shaping evidence-based coach education. Ultimately, the report fosters a more informed, data-driven approach to physical preparation in football."
