By the way...

The special list of goalscorers

Antonio Rüdiger started the list of goals scored in the European Championship.

(Bild: AFP/APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/ALEX GRIMM)

Players who score goals at one of the major soccer events are always particularly celebrated. But not all of them, as "Krone" columnist Harald Petermichl has researched. The list of own goals at the European Championship in Germany already has a few entries.

It's exciting to look at the distribution of surnames in Austria. For example, you can find out that the surname "Tor" is the 82,318th most common surname and is mainly found in Linz, while the cheering variant "Toor" is in 51,220th place and the greatest chance of encountering a person with this name is in Vienna. By contrast, things look pretty bleak for the surname "Eigentor", as it doesn't seem to exist at all in the Alpine republic. This is astonishing, as after the first few days of the European Men's Football Championship there is constant talk of own goals, because currently (as of 22.6., 14:59) a fictitious player named Einar Eigentor leads the scoring charts with five goals, while his closest pursuers, Jamal Musiala and Ivan Schranz, can only boast a paltry two.

To be precise, Antonio Rüdiger opened the scoring in the opening game, after which Maximilian Wöber followed suit. The Czech Robin Hranáč has also made an appearance with a "vlastni branka", Riccardo Calafiori from Rome helped the Iberians with an "autorete" and the Albanian Klaus Gjasula even managed the feat of putting his team behind against Croatia with an "autogol" a quarter of an hour before the end, only to promptly make up for this mishap with a regular goal in stoppage time. With these five own goals, the current tournament already shares second place with the 1998 World Cup; the next few days will show whether the 2018 World Cup record of twelve "own goals" or "buts contre son camp" will be equaled.

Maximilian Wöber scored the second own goal at the European Championship in Germany.

(Bild: APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH)

Of course, this is nothing compared to the very special story of Chris Nicholl, who scored all four goals in a 2-2 draw between Aston Villa and Leicester City in 1976, or the 149 own goals that the SOE Antananarivo team put in the net in protest against a decision by the Madagascan FA in October 2002. Not to mention Helmut Winklhofer, who was born in Lower Bavaria and overcame the stunned Bayern keeper Jean-Marie Pfaff with a perfect lob from 35 meters in 1985 and was promptly named goalscorer of the month by Sportschau. However, this is no longer possible today because own goals have not been included in the selection since then. Presumably because Bayern manager Uli Hoeneß ("I can take the piss out of myself") was once again furious about it. But that's just a guess.