IFFHS EURO STATISTICS 2 - THE MOST PARTICIPATIONS
Picture : Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Cristiano Ronaldo can be the new Recordmen with 5 participations in June !
Players with most participations in final stages: 17
Twenty players have been with their sides in the final stages of the European Championships at least 4 times. They represent 11 different national teams.
17 players from this list took part in 4 tournaments, that is, they played at least one match in each of the four. The first to achieve this milestone were Lothar Matthäus (Germany) and Peter Schmeichel (Denmark) at Euro 2000.
It is interesting that Matthäus, while setting his record, missed two final Euro tournaments (1992, 1996). If he had not missed them, he would have raised the record bar to an unattainable height (6 tournaments).
Peter Schmeichel and Lothar Matthaus - the first to reach the 4 participations
Of those who were subsequently added to the list, also Tomas Rosicky (Czech Republic) has missed one tournament during his run. All the rest took part in 4 consecutive tournaments.
The three players who are included in the ranking and are at the bottom in the table below did not play in all the tournaments they went to. Aron Winter had one tournament as a "tourist", Iker Casillas and Igor Akinfeev even two.
At the same time, Casillas is so far the only player in history to be present with his national team at 5 European Championships (but only played at three of them).
In the upcoming edition, two players will surely take part who should finally raise the record to 5 participations - Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
| PLAYERS WITH MOST | PARTICIPATIONS | IN FINAL | STAGES | |
| Player | Country | Participations | Editions (games) | |
| 1 | Lothar Matthäus | Germany | 4 | 1980 (1), 1984 (3), 1988 (4), 2000 (3) |
| Peter Schmeichel | Denmark | 4 | 1988 (2), 1992 (5), 1996 (3), 2000 (3) | |
| Alessandro Del Piero | Italy | 4 | 1996 (1), 2000 (6), 2004 (3), 2008 (3) | |
| Lilian Thuram | France | 4 | 1996 (5), 2000 (5), 2004 (4), 2008 (2) | |
| Edwin van der Sar | Netherlands | 4 | 1996 (4), 2000 (4), 2004 (5), 2008 (3) | |
| Olof Mellberg | Sweden | 4 | 2000 (3), 2004 (4), 2008 (3), 2012 (3) | |
| Gianluigi Buffon | Italy | 4 | 2004 (3), 2008 (4), 2012 (6), 2016 (4) | |
| Petr Čech | Czech Republic | 4 | 2004 (4), 2008 (3), 2012 (4), 2016 (3) | |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 4 | 2004 (6), 2008 (3), 2012 (5), 2016 (7) | |
| Zlatan Ibrahimovic | Sweden | 4 | 2004 (4), 2008 (3), 2012 (3), 2016 (3) | |
| Andreas Isaksson | Sweden | 4 | 2004 (4), 2008 (3), 2012 (3), 2016 (3) | |
| Kim Källström | Sweden | 4 | 2004 (4), 2008 (2), 2012 (3), 2016 (3) | |
| Lukas Podolski | Germany | 4 | 2004 (1), 2008 (6), 2012 (4), 2016 (1) | |
| Jaroslav Plašil | Czech Republic | 4 | 2004 (1), 2008 (3), 2012 (4), 2016 (3) | |
| Tomáš Rosický | Czech Republic | 4 | 2000 (2), 2004 (4), 2012 (2), 2016 (2) | |
| Bastian Schweinsteiger | Germany | 4 | 2004 (3), 2008 (5), 2012 (5), 2016 (5) | |
| Darijo Srna | Croatia | 4 | 2004 (2), 2008 (3), 2012 (3), 2016 (4) | |
| 18 | Iker Casillas | Spain | 3(+2) | 2000 (0), 2004 (3), 2008 (5), 2012 (6), 2016 (0) |
| 19 | Aron Winter | Netherlands | 3(+1) | 1988 (0), 1992 (2), 1996 (4), 2000 (3) |
| 20 | Igor Akinfeev | Russia | 2(+2) | 2004 (0), 2008 (5), 2012 (0), 2016 (3) |