England Women's Champions

England's Lionesses have retained the UEFA Euros Championship! Congratulations!

At Soccer Mad Boffins we have of course followed the action closely and can now reveal our predictions, and those of random dice rolls, with what actually happened.

Quarter Finals

All three predictors tipped England to go through, with a similar accuracy for Spain. 

Only the dice saw Italy emerge victorious, but it was only Alex and Kevin who correctly picked Germany to beat France.

	AG	KT	DICE
Norway v Italy   1 v 2	2 v 1	2 v 0	3 v 3  (2 v 5)
Sweden v England   2 v 2 (2 v 3)	1 v 2	1 v 3	0 v 3
Spain v Switzerland   2 v 0	3 v 1	2 v 1	1 v 0
France v Germany   1 v 1 (5 v 6)	1 v 2	1 v1 (4 v 5)	2 v2 (3 v 1)

Semi-Finals

Alex was the only soccer mad boffin to back the Lionesses even the correct score, Kevin predicting Italy stealing a dramatic penalty shoot-out, whereas the dice gave it to Italy within 90 minutes. 

	AG	KT	Dice
England v Italy  2 v 1	2 v 1	1 v 1 (3-4 pens)	0 V 1
Germany v Spain  0 v 1	1 v 3	2 v 1	0 V 3

 Results: Alex got both outcomes correct and even the England v Italy scoreline. The dice got one outcome. Kevin was sadly way off

FINAL

The tables were turned in the Final, Alex thinking a straight-forward convincing win for Spain, as did the dice. Kevin righted his lack of faith in the previous round with a bold five goal thriller with England netting three in normal time. The reality was of course somewhere in between.  This one went to Kevin, and to England.

	AG	KT	Dice
England v  Spain  1 v 1 (3 v 1 penalties)	1 v 3	3 v 2	0 v 3

UEFA Women's Euros 2025: Group Stages Predictions & Reflections

 GROUP STAGES

 With the Group stages now complete, we can see that Alex’s prediction that Spain will beat Germany to win the tournament, and Kevin’s that Sweden will beat Germany, are still very much alive.

However, the random dice rolls’ projection of a Netherlands v Wales final (0-3 Netherlands on penalties) has been consigned to the reject bin.

So, let’s break down how we all did, group by group. To make things interesting we have awarded a point for each correctly predicted finishing position in each group.

 

Group A

Place	Actual	AG	KT	Dice
1	Norway	Switzerland	Iceland	Norway
2	Switzerland	Finland	Switzerland	Finland
3	Finland	Iceland	Norway	Iceland
4	Iceland	Norway	Finland	Switzerland
Points (4 maximum)	-	0	1	1

 

Only the dice could foresee plucky Norway’s triumph in this Group. Both Alex and Kevin did not even think that they would progress. Overall, this was the trickiest Group to predict with Kevin and the dice being most accurate with 1 point out of a possible 4 (or 25%).

 

Group B

Place	Actual	AG	KT	Dice
1	Spain	Spain	Spain	Portugal
2	Italy	Italy	Italy	Italy
3	Belgium	Portugal	Portugal	Belgium
4	Portugal	Belgium	Belgium	Spain
Points	-	2	2	2

 

Alex and Kevin both accurately predicted the top two but got the bottom two in the wrong order. The dice picked up points for being accurate about Italy and Belgium’s outcomes but were comically wide of the mark in terms of top and bottom. However, all three predictors picked up 2 points, or 50% of what was available.

 

Group C

Place	Actual	AG	KT	Dice
1	Sweden	Germany	Sweden	Poland
2	Germany	Sweden	Germany	Sweden
3	Poland	Poland	Denmark	Denmark
4	Denmark	Denmark	Poland	Germany
Points	-	2	2	0

 

AG was correct about the bottom two but got the order of the top two the wrong wat round. For Kevin, the reverse was true. Two points apiece.  The Dice had a miserable Group with zero points accumulated.

 

Group D

Place	Actual	AG	KT	Dice
1	France	France	England	Netherlands
2	England	Netherlands	France	Wales
3	Netherlands	England	Netherlands	France
4	Wales	Wales	Wales	England
Points	-	2	2	0

 

AG should have had more faith in England’s chances! But was accurately pessimistic about Wales. Both he and Kevin picked up another two points, but once again it was poor form for the dice.

 

 

Total Points

Kevin tops the leader board for correct placings with 7 points (44% accuracy). Alex was correct about a third of the time with 6 points (38% accuracy). Random chance was the weakest predictor, the dice scoring just 3 points overall (19% accuracy).

AG	KT	Dice
6 (38%)	7 (44%)	3 (19%)

 

We can of course look at this in other ways, and looking simply at who predicted the top two teams to qualify from each group, but not necessarily in what order, can be done if we award a point for each team correctly identified as progressing front the Group stages.

With four groups and the top two finishers qualifying from each, we have a maximum of 8 points up for grabs, the actual points are given with percentage accuracy in brackets, Kevin’s clairvoyance is all the more impressive and Alex scores impressively too:

 

AG	KT	Dice
6 (75%)	7 (86%)	2 (25%)

 

 

QUARTER FINALS

 We now turn our attention to the Quarter Finals, for which we made a fresh set of predictions now that we know exactly which teams will face which. We will publish more information at a later date, but suffice to say that both Alex and Kevin have England to progress to the semi-finals when they play Sweden this Thursday 17^th July at 8pm.

 

 

Please note that the predictions on this blog are for academic purposes only and should not be used to inform gambling or gambling decisions.

Soccer-Mad Boffins' Field Trip to Millwall FC

On Saturday 15th March we attended Millwall’s Community Day centred around a Saturday league game against Stoke City, on the invitation of the club's Community Trust Safeguarding and EDI Lead, and Women's Team General Manager Jason Vincent. Various employers and agencies from public and private sector attended with stalls and fundraising, and a community football tournament involving men’s, women’s, boys and girls teams took place in the morning. A safe atmosphere was maintained in and around the stadium with a carnival feel, and at half time a procession took place around the stadium showcasing the club’s women’s and community teams. Some of the employability workers that we spoke to reported a better uptake in engaging with vocational training by involving the club than through the job centre – it was clear that these programmes run jointly with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Greater London Authority were very successful. The Lions triumphed with a last gasp penalty in the 90th minute winning 1-0 after a tense game.

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023: England so far

England's Lionesses have scrapped their way past a robust Nigeria side to qualify for the Quarter Finals of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.

This was very different to the previous routing of China and had more in common with the opening game against Haiti as England were closed down quickly and not allowed the amount of time on the ball that they enjoy.

A disallowed penalty was controversial and a later red card may haunt them now with a key player missing from future games.

However we still have hopes for England whose squad has strength in depth and is built on reliable foundations.

Here is how our predictions for England are looking so far. Alex has correctly predicted England to win every game, although was way off with the scorelines. Meanwhile Kevin has been a good predictor of England's defence correctly identifying the away goals for each game. The random dice are way off!

	Actual Score	AG	KT	Dice
England v Haiti	1v0	5v0	4v0	2v1
England v Denmark	1v0	3v1	0v0	0v3
China v England	1v6	1v2	1v1	3v0
England v Nigeria	0v0 (4v2 pens)	3v0	2v0	2v1

UEFA Women's EURO 2022: Predictions and Progress

 

The 2022 Women's Euro tournament kicked off last week and has already proven an exciting tournament with several high scoring games, not least England's 8-0 win over Norway last night.

As usual we have made some scoreline predictions as well as rolling dice to compare our skills with random chance.  As usual we are so far outperforming the dice!

This time round we subscribed to the official UEFA gaming league, which can be found here

Kevin currently leads with Alex a few points behind, scrapping it out with the random dice - for credibilities sake let's hope that he doesn't come last in this three-way league!

England are some people's favourites to win, and we hope that they do. BUT there are some great times, particularly France who have really gelled.

The entire tournament is held in England, which is consistent with the recommendation that we made in our book Foundations of Managing Soccer Events, that the English FA should consider hosting a major women's tournament. You heard it here first folks!

Picking a winner is not an easy task, but one thing we can predict is that this is going to be a feast of football.