The final of UEFA Euro 2000 was a football match played on 2 July 2000 at Feijenoord Stadion in Rotterdam, Netherlands, to determine the winner of UEFA Euro 2000. France won the match, defeating Italy 2–1.
Marco Delvecchio gave Italy the lead in the 55th minute and they held on until the final minute of injury time, when Sylvain Wiltord crashed a low drive past Italian keeper Francesco Toldo to take the game into extra time. France won the game just before half-time in extra-time when Robert Pirès cut the ball back for David Trezeguet to fire the golden goal and win the tournament for France.
The 2000 UEFA European Football Championship, also known as Euro 2000, was the 11th UEFA European Football Championship, which is held every four years and organised by UEFA, association football's governing body in Europe.
The finals of Euro 2000 were co-hosted (the first time this happened) by Belgium and the Netherlands, between 10 June and 2 July 2000. Spain and Austria also bid to host the event. The final tournament was contested by 16 nations. With the exception of the national teams of the hosts, Belgium and the Netherlands, the finalists had to go through a qualifying round to reach the final stage. France won the tournament, by defeating Italy 2–1 in the final, via a golden goal.
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.
One of the biggest surprises of the tournament was Portugal, winning Group A with three wins, including a 3–0 win against Germany, with Sérgio Conceição scoring a hat-trick, and a 3–2 win over 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.
UEFA Euro 2000 is the official game of UEFA Euro 2000 football tournament hosted in Belgium and the Netherlands. The game was published by EA Sports and developed by EA Canada. It is available for PC and PlayStation.
The game was EA Sports' first game based on the European Championships after obtaining the official licence from UEFA, which had previously been held by Gremlin Interactive. The game features all 49 teams from the qualification stage of the Euro 2000 championships, as well as the hosts Belgium and the Netherlands who qualified for the finals automatically. The player can choose one of the teams and attempt to qualify them for the tournament and then participate in the finals themselves.
Paul Oakenfold provides the game's music, whilst commentary is from John Motson and Mark Lawrenson.
Reviewing the PlayStation version, PlayStation Max made several comparisons to EA Sports' other football video game, FIFA 2000. They considered Euro 2000 to very similar but slower and more jerky to play than FIFA 2000 and also noted that it contained less teams compared to FIFA due to its focus on European international teams, whereas FIFA has international teams from across the world as well as club teams. This led to a rating of 65%.