User:The Almightey Drill/hat



This is a list of all hat-tricks scored during UEFA European Championships; that is, the occasions when a footballer has scored three or more goals in a single football European Championship match (not including qualification matches). Scoring a hat-trick in a European Championship is a relatively rare event: only eight hat-tricks have been scored in the 14 editions of the World Cup tournament. As UEFA is the governing body of European association football, official hat-tricks are only noted when UEFA recognises that at least three goals were scored by one player in one match.

The tournament was first held in 1960, but not hat-trick was scored in any of the first four editions. In the semi-finals of the 1976 version, Dieter Müller scored the first hat-trick in his first international game, as West Germany came from behind to defeat Yugoslavia 4–2 after extra time. Four years later his compatriot Klaus Allofs scored the second hat-trick, in a 3–2 group stage win over Belgium. In the 1984 edition, there were more than one hat-trick in the tournament for the first time, both by French captain Michel Platini, who became the only player to score more than one in the same tournament. After Marco van Basten's three goals for the Netherlands in a 3–1 group stage win over England in 1988, there were no hat-tricks in the 1992 and 1996 stagings.

In UEFA Euro 2000, there were a joint-record two hat-tricks: Sérgio Conceição scored all of the goals in Portugal's group stage victory over the Germans, and Patrick Kluivert recorded three goals in the Netherlands' 6–1 win over the Yugoslavs in the quarter-finals. Of the last three editions of the tournament (2004, 2008, 2012), there has only been one hat-trick, when Spain's David Villa scored three times in a 4–1 win over Russia in the 2008 group stage.

Every player who has scored a hat-trick in the European Championship has ended on the winning team in that match. On all but three occasions they have ended up winning the tournament. No player has scored in a Championship final, nor has any recorded more than three goals in the same game.