The UEFA European Championship is now arguably a tougher competition to win than the FIFA World Cup. We’d state this assumption based on the fact that the relative paucity of poor-quality teams in the finals of the European tournament makes it a trickier tournament to conquer than FIFA’s flagship event.
The competition has gone from strength to strength in recent editions and has grown immensely in the last decade or two. In 1960, the tournament was open to just 17 nations, and the finals of the competition was a four-team affair; as of 2024, the total of competing countries have tripled, and the finals see 24 of the best do battle for the ultimate prize.
Fans are as eager as ever to be there live and in person to see their national team heroes take to the field, and if you look to secure tickets via UEFA’s ticketing portal, you will more than likely be left disappointed.
There, you’ll join millions of fans in a lottery-style system that leaves a lot to be desired, not least because the first ticket release occurs prior to the draw for the finals themselves. This creates a rather bizarre situation where you’ll make an application for tickets for a game, not even knowing which two teams might be doing battle.
A second ticket release after the draw is even harder to emerge from with success, given the sheer size of interest and the fact that a huge chunk of tickets will have already been randomly assigned.
At SeatPick, you can simply select from a wide variety of tickets on our platform, which are sourced from hundreds of trusted ticket reseller sites, leaving fans able to easily check the market, compare prices, and find the best deals around.
Scotland vs Poland UEFA Euros Tournament Record
Scotland have a very patchy record in the UEFA European Championships, managing to qualify for just three finals tournaments prior to Euro 2024.
The first time they got to enjoy a finals experience was in Sweden in 1992, and they had the misfortune of being drawn into a group with the likes of the Netherlands and Germany, and unsurprisingly, did not manage to get to the knockout phase.
Andy Roxburgh’s side did, however, perform relatively well. They only lost their opener to the Dutch due to a late Dennis Bergkamp winner but were comfortably beaten by Germany before demolishing the CIS 3-0 in a morale-boosting first-ever finals victory.
Four years later, they made the finals again, this time under national team coach Craig Brown, and at the finals in England, they once again faced the Netherlands and this time emerged with a goalless draw from their opening fixture.
They then faced England at Wembley Stadium in a game that is now perhaps best remembered for Paul Gascoigne’s final solo effort as well as his goal celebration. The Scots lost that game 2-0 but did win their final match, 1-0 against Switzerland, and only missed out on a place in the knockout stage due to goals scored, having finished with the same record as Holland in terms of points garnered.
They had to wait until the Euro 2020 finals to make another return to the competition, and in the competition, which was held across Europe, they started with a loss to the Czech Republic before drawing 0-0 with England and ending their efforts with another defeat, this time against Croatia.
Poland’s record in the competition is not much better than their opponents. Biało-czerwoni, or The White-Red if you prefer, have only qualified for the finals on four occasions, and on three of those, they finished by being eliminated in the group stage without a win to their name.
The one exception to this rule came at Euro 2016, where they performed admirably. They finished second in their group after drawing with Germany and beating both Northern Ireland and Ukraine before then beating Switzerland on penalties in the Round of 16.
They faced Portugal in the Quarter-Finals, and then Bayern Munich forward Robert Lewandowski put the Poles ahead after just two minutes before Renato Sanches leveled and the game eventually went to penalties, and the Portuguese eased through, scoring all five of their spot-kicks to Poland’s three from four.
Scotland vs Poland Head-to-Head
Scotland and Poland have met in just one previous UEFA European Championship campaign, and that came in the qualifying stages of the Euro 2016 finals.
Both matches ended 2-2, with the second of these two matches coming to a close with Robert Lewandowski scoring a late equalizer at Hampden Park.
