Euro Result: Spain 3-0 Croatia

At Euro 2024, pain had a great start, easily defeating Croatia in Berlin. Our Spain vs. Croatia’s statistics page offers a retrospective on the match.

In the fourth straight EURO final between these two teams, Spain prevailed for the third time against well-known rivals thanks to a merciless and deft offensive performance.

Following a dominant first half, Fabián Ruiz‘s exquisite pinpoint ball to Álvaro Morata gave La Roja the lead 29 minutes in. Morata finished coolly to record his seventh goal for his country in the EURO Finals, three of which came against Croatia.

Shortly after, Fabián Ruiz transformed from a supplier to a goal scorer, circling around in the area and hitting into the bottom-right corner to give Spain complete control.

After the rapid fire double, Croatia came back strong, with Joško Gvardiol pricking Unai Simón’s fingers and Ante Budimir coming within a few centimeters of winning the rebound.

However, just before halftime, Spain’s 16-year-old winger Lamine Yamal made history by becoming the youngest player to ever appear at a EURO. Dani Carvajal, the team’s final scorer in the Champions League, converted Yamal’s clever cross to seal a fantastic first half for Luis de la Fuente’s team.

At the beginning of the second half, Yamal was right in the heart of things again, and Dominik Livaković’s incredible reaction stop kept him from making history by also being the youngest EURO goal scorer.

Vatreni will now pick themselves up and face Albania once more on June 19. The next day, Spain will face Italy, and with such a convincing performance, supporters of La Roja could be starting to dream of returning to Berlin’s Olympiastadion for the final on July 14.

Important statistics

After 12 EURO appearances, Spain has only lost once in their opening encounter (W6 D5), with the loss occurring against Norway at EURO 2000 (L 1-0).
In their previous nine EURO group stage matches, La Roja has maintained seven clean sheets.
Six of the previous seven games for De la Fuente’s club have seen three goals or more scored.
With seven goals, Álvaro Morata is currently tied with Alan Shearer and Antoine Griezmann for third place in EURO scoring history.
At 16 years and 338 days, Lamine Yamal overcame Poland’s Kacper Kozłowski, who had held the record, to become the youngest player to appear at a EURO (17 years and 246 days).
In their past 13 EURO group stage games, Croatia has only lost three of them (W7 D3).
In their past 15 EURO group stage games, it was only the third time they had gone down without scoring.
Luka Modrić has now represented Croatia in five EURO final competitions. He has made more appearances than any other Croatian player, totaling 14.