Euro 2020 prediction

After my tips for Euro 2012, and Euro 2016, turned out to be, well, less than 100% accurate, I thought I would give myself the best possible chance of picking the winner of this year’s pandemic-delayed tournament by waiting until I had only two teams to choose from.

So, Italy or England? It’s a tough call. To be honest I wasn’t really expecting either side to get past the last eight; if you’d twisted my arm before the first game kicked off I’d have put my money on France and Spain to make the final. Italy are certainly the better team technically, but England are no slouches, and they have home advantage, plus a confidence-boosting narrative of national redemption to drive them on.

The statistics would seem to favour the Italians, who are ahead 11-8 on past wins, with 8 draws; for games this century it’s 4-1 to Italy, with 2 draws, which were the last 2 games played, though both were friendlies. The last competitive game was at the 2014 World Cup, which finished 2-1 to the Italians.

However football at this level is difficult to predict; in a one-off game even a heavy underdog always has a chance. As we’ve noted before (in a post explaining away a woefully inaccurate World Cup forecast), that’s what makes the game so enchanting.

But predict I shall – Italy will prevail.