The 1972 UEFA European Football Championship final tournament was held in Belgium. This was the fourth

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition is contes ...

, held every four years and endorsed by

UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...

. The final tournament took place between 14 and 18 June 1972. Only four countries played in the final tournament, with the tournament consisting of the semi-finals, a

third place play-off A third place match, game for third place, bronze medal game or consolation game is a single match that is included in many sporting knockout tournaments to decide which competitor or team will be credited with finishing third and fourth. The tea ...

, and the final. The hosts were only announced after the qualifying round, which meant all teams had to participate in the qualification process for the final stage. Belgium was chosen among three candidates; the other bids came from England and Italy, whose teams did not reach the semi-finals.

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

won the tournament, beating the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

3–0 in the final, with goals coming from

Gerd Müller Gerhard "Gerd" Müller (; 3 November 1945 – 15 August 2021) was a German professional footballer. A striker renowned for his clinical finishing, especially in and around the six-yard box, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest goalsco ...

(twice) and

Herbert Wimmer Herbert "Hacki" Wimmer (born 9 November 1944) is a German former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. Besides winning five national championships and two UEFA Cups with his club side Borussia Mönchengladbach, he won the 1974 World ...

at the

Heysel Stadium The King Baudouin Stadium (french: Stade Roi Baudouin , nl, Koning Boudewijnstadion ) is a sports ground in north-west Brussels, Belgium. Located in the Heysel district of the City of Brussels, it was built to embellish the Heysel Plateau in v ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Qualification

The qualifying round was played throughout 1970 and 1971 (group phase), and 1972 (quarter-finals). There were eight qualifying groups of four teams each. The matches were played in a home-and-away basis. Victories were worth two points, draws one point, and defeats no points. Only group winners could qualify for the quarter-finals. The quarter-finals were played in two legs on a home-and-away basis. The winners of the quarter-finals went through to the final tournament.

Qualified teams

Venues

Squads

Match officials

Final tournament

At the final tournament,

extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played onl ...

and a

penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pen ...

were used to decide the winner if necessary. ''All times are local,

CET CET or cet may refer to: Places * Cet, Albania * Cet, standard astronomical abbreviation for the constellation Cetus * Colchester Town railway station (National Rail code CET), in Colchester, England Arts, entertainment, and media * Comcast Ente ...

(

UTC+1 UTC+01:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +01:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2019-02-07T23:28:34+01:00. This time is used in: *Central European Time *West Africa Time *Western European Summer Time ** B ...

)''

Bracket

Semi-finals

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Third-place play-off

Final

Statistics

Goalscorers

Awards

;UEFA Team of the Tournament

References

External links

UEFA Euro 1972
at UEFA.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Uefa Euro 1972

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...

1971–72 in European football 1971–72 in Belgian football

June 1972 sports events in Europe