UEFA Euro 2024 semi finals are here

 

The semi-finals of the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament are upon us. Lasr night Spain beat France 2-1 to book their place in Sunday's Final.  Sixteen year old Lamine Lamal scored one of Spain's goals, thus becoming the tournament's youngest ever goalscorer at just sixteen years of age (younger than our university students!)

Tonight England face Netherlands to decide the other place.

Critics have bemoaned England's boring approach as unconvincing. But that misses the point; show-boat football , or the up n' at 'em hit it and hope favoured by our nation's previous semi-skilled teams, achieved absolutely nothing. 

Whereas Southgate's 'grey men of Europe' tactics have served England well, winning the group and inching into the semi-final. There are no WAGS, no 'dentist chair' nightclub debauchery, no petulance on the field of play. Just a risk averse 'gets the job done' workmanlike dedication to playing football.

Only time will tell how England perform on the night, but maybe just maybe, the can do this.

As usual, here are our predictions for the outcome of the semi-final games, compared to those of random dice-rolls:

	AG	KT	DICE
Spain v France	2 -2 (2-2 AET) (3 - 4 pens)	1 v 1 (3-1 AET)	0 v 1
Netherlands v England	2 v 2 (2v2 AET) (3 V 4 pens)	1 v 1 (2 - 2 AET,  5-4 pens)	1 v 1 (1 v 2AET)

 

Kevin was the only player to correctly predict a Spain win, but did not see that happening inside of 90 minutes.  Alex knew that Spain would net twice, but had more faith in the French.

Alex think that England might just win this one but that it will be close, England once again breaking their penalty shoot-out jinx. Kevin has less faith, predicting Netherlands to just do it on penalties.   The dice? They've decided England to clinch it with an extra-time winner.  

What do YOU think?

As usual these predictions are presented just for fun and we do not encourage gambling.

Euro 2024 Quarter Finals

Lo and behold!  The Quarter Finals of the UEFA European Championships 2024 kick off on Friday 5th July.

Here our our predictions:

	AG	KT	Dice
Spain v Germany	0-0 0-2 AET	2v2 5v4 pens	4 v 3
Portugal v France	2-3	2v1	5 v 2
England v Switzerland	2v1	1v1 2v2 AET, 4v3 pens	0 v 0,  1 v 1 AET, 5 v 3 Pens
Netherlands v Turkey	2v3	2v0	0 v 0, 0 v 3 AET

Alex tips Germany, France, England and Turkey to progress

Kevin chooses Spain, Portugal, England (just!) and Netherlands

The dice favour Spain, Portugal, England and Turkey.

As usual, we present this info only for fun and do not encourage anyone to use these predictions to inform gambling decisions.

Celebrating Ten Years of Soccer Mad Boffins with a Euro 2024 Tournament Prediction

It was June 2014 when we founded this blog. The launch coincided not only with our FIFA scholarship to research the business and administrative history of the 1966 FIFA World Cup, but also with the start of that years FIFA World Cup, the 20th edition of the tournament hosted in Brazil.

We followed the tournament with various comments and fun posts and who could predict that we would still be going strong in 2024!?

Speaking of predictions, the first time that we attempted to predict the scores and outcomes of a football tournament was the following edition, Russia 2018.  Which leads us nicely to the present.

Today, Friday 14th June, is the start of the UEFA European Championship. Of the British teams, Scotland face Germany on the opening evening, whilst England play Serbia on Sunday 16th.

BBC pundits generally favour England or France to win the cup which can you read by.following this link.

Sky Sports report betting odds also favour the cross-channel rivals but show that Germany and Portugal are close behind, see here.

The NY Times in collaboration with The Athletic has a more statistical approach, showing Germany as having a squad 'built to win', Portugal as 'having worked the goalkeeeper more than any other team' and Belgium's Lokaku as being a top striker.  England, they sneer dismissively, will be heavily reliant on Harry Kane's goals. See here.

Being free thinkers, we make our own predictions, as well as randomly rolling a dice as a control test.  Using our football knowledge and gut instinct, we have some interesting ideas:

On the group games for Scotland and England:

Scotland

Game	AG	KT	Dice
Germany v Scotland	0-2	1-1	0-3
Scotland v Switzerland	3-2	0-1	1-4
Scotland v Hungary	1-0	2-1	3-0

 

England

Game	AG	KT	Dice
Serbia v England	0-3	1-1	1-0
Denmark v England	0-2	0-2	2-6
England v Slovenia	5-0	1-1	2-0

 

Regarding tournament progress, both Alex and Kevin see the Brits as qualifying from their respective groups, itself a huge achievement for the Scottish bravehearts, but are less confident in England than the professional pundits or bookmakers, predicting a Quarter Final exit.  The dice rolled that both nations will crash out in the Round of 16.

Progress

Team	AG	KT	Dice
Scotland	R16	R16	R16
England	QF	QF	R16

The UK General Election will be held just days after the round of 16. As we reported in our 2021 chapter on sport and populism Harold Wilson lost the 1970 General Election just days after England crashed out of the 1970 World Cup to Germany. Rishi Sunak must be pretty confident that England will progress to the Quarter Finals too!

In terms of who will win the tournament:

Winners

Alex (AG) : France (winners), Portugal (runner-up)

Kevin (KT): Portugal (winners), Croatia (runner-up)

Dice: Croatia (winners), Ukraine (runner-up)

Over to YOU

Who do YOU think will win? How far do YOU think that England or Scotland can go? Please leave us a comment below.

PS: We hope that you enjoy the Euro 2024 tournament and in celebrating 2014-2024 of Soccer Mad Boffins.  Please read the above article for fun, we offer no advice nor encouragement for betting/gambling on the tournament and do this prediction exercise solely for entertainment and to see if we can be more accurate than the pundits!