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Euro predictions show Germany favourites to lift trophy

Wednesday 8 June 2016

Academics from the University of Salford have used their unrivalled database of player statistics to come up with a series of prediction for the European Championships, which start later this month.

After running their tournament simulation 10,000 times theteam at Salford found that Germany is the team most likely to win, with Englandas sixth most likely, behind Spain, France, Portugal and Belgium, as well asthe Germans.

Ian McHale, Professor of Sports Analytics at the Universityof Salford, said: “Our database tracks 3,000 players based in Europe, includingall the players who will be at the Euros this summer. We have assumed the mostlikely starting eleven based on line-ups in the qualifiers.

“We have used player based stats, not team based. We havedetailed numbers on all those players and what they do while on the pitch: thetiming and location of every tackle, every pass, every shot. We use the data torate the players, and then use the player ratings to predict the outcomes ofmatches.”

Each individual match during the group stage was simulatedby SAM, the Sport Analytics Machine, and then the qualifiers for the knockoutstages calculated, with the rest of the tournament then played out using SAMalgorithms.

After crunching the numbers Germany emerged as favourites,with a 17% chance of winning. Spain are second favourites with a 15% chance ofwinning, France, with home advantage, have 12%, Portugal 11%, Belgium 8% andEngland 7%, the same as Croatia.

The Three Lions have a 54% chance of reaching the quarterfinals or better.

Professor McHale added: “Our data takes into account allkind of factors, including the fact the tournament is being played in France.There are no real surprises, except perhaps Italy being only tenth favouritesand Croatia having a sneakily good team.

“Portugal having more chance than England shows the impactthat one truly world-class player can have. If he finally delivers forPortugal, Cristiano Ronaldo could win them the tournament.”

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Sam Wood

0161 295 5361