UEFA Euro 2004 Final

The UEFA Euro 2004 Final was a football match played on 4 July 2004 at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal to determine the winner of UEFA Euro 2004. The match featured tournament hosts Portugal, who went into the match as favourites, and Greece, playing in only their second European Championship. It was the first time in a major international tournament where both finalists had also played in the opening game of the tournament. Both teams had qualified for the knockout stage from Group A of the tournament's group stage, with Greece winning 2–1 in the teams' earlier meeting.

Greece won the final 1–0, defying odds of 80–1 from the beginning of the tournament, with Angelos Charisteas scoring the winning goal in the 57th minute. While the dedication of the side and the victory were celebrated by their nation, Greece were dubbed by Barry Glendenning of The Guardian as "the only underdogs in history that everyone wants to see get beaten".

Route to the final

Match

Details

Portugal  v  Greece

UEFA Euro 2004

The 2004 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2004 or Euro 2004, was the 12th edition of the UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football competition contested by the men's national teams of the member associations of UEFA. The final tournament was hosted in Portugal for the first time, after their bid was selected on 12 October 1999, over rival bids from Spain and Austria/Hungary. It took place from 12 June to 4 July 2004, and matches were played in ten venues across eight cities: Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Guimarães, Faro/Loulé, Leiria, Lisbon and Porto.

As in the 1996 and 2000 editions, the final tournament was contested by 16 teams – the hosts plus the 15 teams that successfully overcame the qualification round, which began in September 2002. Latvia secured their first participation in a major tournament after overcoming Turkey in the play-offs, while Greece returned to the European Championship after 24 years.

The tournament was rich in surprises and upsets: Germany, Spain and Italy were knocked out during the group stage, while France, the defending champions, were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Greece. The Portuguese team recovered from an opening defeat to Greece to reach the final, eliminating England and the Netherlands along the way. For the first time in a major football tournament, the last match featured the same teams as the opening match, and as in their previous encounter, Portugal were beaten by Greece with a goal from Angelos Charisteas. Greece's triumph was unexpected, considering that they had only qualified for two other major tournaments, the UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1994 FIFA World Cup, where they failed to win a single match.

UEFA Euro 2004 (video game)

UEFA Euro 2004 is the official licensed video game of UEFA Euro 2004 football tournament hosted in Portugal. The game was developed by EA Canada and published by EA Sports. It was released for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2.

It is the second game from EA Sports based on the quadrennial UEFA European Championship and features all 51 national teams from the respective qualifying round.

The commentary is provided by John Motson and Ally McCoist.

Gameplay

UEFA Euro 2004 uses a tweaked and improved version of the graphics engine from FIFA 2004 and introduces many new gameplay features and game modes to both the UEFA Euro and FIFA series.

Development

Electronic Arts made the game's development public on February 6, 2004, when it announced that it had signed an agreement with UEFA to develop, publish and distribute the official game based on UEFA Euro 2004 championship that would begin on June 12 of that same year in Portugal.

For the soundtrack, the developers specifically chose rock-based tracks due to the genre's big resurgence in Europe at the time.