Spain's Simon the latest to experience disaster as own goals continue to dominate Euro 2020

Ryan Tolmich

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Spain's Simon the latest to experience disaster as own goals continue to dominate Euro 2020 image

Spain became the latest victim of an unfortunate own goal as self-inflicted errors continue to dominate Euro 2020.

Goalkeeper Unai Simon's nightmare moment came early on in Spain's Round of 16 clash with Croatia, giving the 2018 World Cup runners-up a 1-0 lead.

On a backpass from Pedri, Simon completely missed his touch as the ball ran straight into the back of the net to give Croatia the early advantage.

A historic amount of own goals

The calamitous own goal was the ninth of Euro 2020, which means this tournament has now featured the same amount of own goals as every other European Championship combined.

Indeed, it's a tournament that began with an OG, with Merih Demiral unfortunately turning the first goal of the tournament into his own net.

Since then, Lukas Hradecky, Mats Hummels, Wojciech Szczesny, Ruben Dias, Raphael Guerreiro, Martin Dubravka, Juraj Kucka and, now, Pedri have all been on the end of own goals throughout the tournament.

While Pedri was the one statistically responsible, the fault no doubt lies with Simon, who left the Barcelona youngster hanging by completely failing to control a ball that was right in front of him.

That mistake continued a difficult trend for Simon, who, at club level, made the most mistakes that led to goals across the top five European Leagues with six.

'What has just happened?!'

Predictably, social media was stunned by Simon's mistake, even if those mistakes have been commonplace this summer.

 

Further reading

Ryan Tolmich