Euro2024 was another roller coaster ride for England fans as the team rode their luck and scrapped their way to the final, only to be beaten by the tournament's best team, Spain.

Now the England team has returned from Berlin with their hard-fought silver medals and the usual punditry-led post-mortem has been held into why it's not coming home, runABC coach and news writer Alan Newman has been absorbed by the wealth of stats that have emerged.

Today, top football players wear highly accurate sensors that record speed, distance and positioning on the field of play, so we can confidently state who ran the fastest, furthest, and most effectively. So who were the Mo Farahs and Usain Bolts of the football world?

Seven England players topped the official stats for total distance run. Midfielders Declan Rice (85.7km), Phil Foden (79.5km) and Jude Bellingham (75.2km) ran the furthest of more than 400 players ranked by UEFA Euro2024 statisticians. The next four were England's defenders Kyle Walker (74.8km) and John Stones (71.7km), followed by forwards Harry Kane (70.4km) and Bukayo Saka (69.9km).

But that's not the whole story, as time on the pitch has to be considered. Rice, Walker and Stones played all 690 competitive minutes of England's seven games, whereas striker Kane was in action for 605 minutes. When averaged, England's best distance runners were Foden (11.5km/90mins), Rice (11.2km/90mins) and Kane (10.5km/90mins). How many runABC readers would be happy running over 10 kilometres in less than 90 minutes?

Of course, footballers don't run at a steady pace, or in a straight line, for the whole 90 minutes plus of a match. Their movement has to be a subtle blend of walking, jogging, and sometimes sprinting into an area to beat an offside trap, to collect a pass, or to make a defensive block.

Speed is another key statistic and in that respect, our players were outclassed by the fastest player of the tournament, Kylian Mbappe (France), who hit a top speed of 36.5km/hr. Our best was one of the quickest defenders in the world, Kyle Walker (34.8km/hr), ranked 20th overall. Two more England defenders – Luke Shaw and Ezri Konsa (34.2km/hr) – made the top 50. Behind them, only Bellingham and Saka (33.5km/hr) plus midfielder Conor Gallagher (33.3km/hr) made the top 100 players.

By comparison, Usain Bolt's top speed in his 2009 world record 100m run in 9.58sec was 44.72km/hr, and the women's 100m world record of 10.49sec saw Florence Griffith-Joyner peak at 39.1km/hr in 1988 – 35 years ago.

Bolt famously dabbled in professional football after retiring from athletics. His career highlight was scoring twice in a friendly for Central Coast Mariners in Australia and several appearances in Socer Aid matches, along with Sir Mo Farah. However, we have no stats to show how fast the 'Lightning' Bolt was in football boots on grass and he never got to play for his beloved Manchester United!

So, as Eric Morecambe might have said: "We played all the right players but not necessarily in the right positions". Maybe our players did most of the running but not at the right pace or to the right places, something for the new England manager to ponder...

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay