EURO 2024 Round 8 Predictions

Predictions for the EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP 2024 based on Statistical Analytical Football Models

AUEB & Trieste Sports Analytics Research Group,

Athens University of Economics and Business and University of Trieste

This article was edited and co-authored by Ioannis Ntzoufras, Professor of Statistics at AUEB, and Argyro Damoulaki, PhD Candidate in the same department. The article is based on the analysis of the collaborating team of Trieste (Professor Leonardo Egidi and PhD candidates Roberto Macri Demartino and Giulio Fantuzzi) with the assistance of V. Palaskas (OpenBet, application development) D. Karlis (AUEB Statistics, analysis consultant). The final result is cooperation between the research teams of the two universities on Sports Analytics.

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The quarter-finals of the European Championship 2024 are here and great matches await us. Two classic "derbies", between Spain-Germany and Portugal-France, and two teams ready to qualify, Switzerland and Turkey, against the traditional powers of England and the Netherlands. After a brief review of our predictions for the round of 16, we present our predictions for the quarter-finals.

Reminder for friends of Statistics  

The use of statistical techniques to predict football matches first appeared in the scientific literature in 1968 with the pioneering scientific publication of Reep & Benjamin. The next real innovations appear in the 80s (with the work of Michael Maher) and the 90s (with the work of Lee in 1997). However, the first important publications in the field, introducing models on which models are based and which we still use today, were the works of Dixon & Coles in 1997 and the bivariate Poisson model of Karlis and Ntzoufra in 2003 (two of the authors of this analysis). These two models formed the basis of modern models for predicting football match outcomes.

In this analysis we use the model of Karlis and Ntzoufras through the package "footbayes" in the statistical programming language R developed by Professor Leonardo Egidi from the University of Trieste with the assistance of Vasilis Palaskas (Analyst at Open Bet and active member of AUEB Sports Analytics Group). The model also includes the estimation of parameters that estimate the performance of each group that change over time. To learn the model, all international matches of the 2020-2024 period were used. The main explanatory variable is the difference between the two teams in the Coca-Cola/FIFA ranking.  The model, first proposed by Karlis & Ntzoufras in 2003, extends the usual two-variate Poisson model.  Details of the statistical and machine learning model used can be found at the end of this article.

Review of the round of 16.

With the completion of the round of 16, the results are quite satisfactory, since the model managed to correctly predict 75% of the games. The games were basically close, like all knockout matches, while the favorites did not prevail so easily. France won Belgium with an own goal in the 85th minute, England tied in stoppage time and won Slovakia in extra time while Portugal needed a penalty shootout to break Slovenia's resistance. Spain, Germany and the Netherlands easily prevailed against their opponents. The big surprise of the round of 16 was Switzerland, who comfortably prevailed against Italy. Turkey's surprise-victory against Austria was similar, but it seemed difficult to overcome until the end. It should be noted that the win probability of Switzerland based on the model was remarkable (29%), as well as Turkey's that was not negligible (22%).

Table 1: Table with the odds of the outcome of the matches for the round of 16 of the European Championship 2024.

Predictions for the Round of 8

Heading into the finals, the differences between the teams are smaller and the matches more close. From Table 2 with the possible results, the following teams stand out as favorites:

1. The Netherlands with a 61% chance of winning against Turkey
2. England with a 53% chance of winning against Switzerland

Of these two favorites, the Netherlands had shown a mediocre face in the group stage but seem to have turned the corner in the knockouts. England, on the other hand, troubled in the round of 16 at a time when Switzerland looks very strong as an opponent, and it seems based on the matches that they will make it much more difficult for England than the model predicts. In fact, the probability of a draw is increased (28%).

Finally, the remaining two matches are more close but with a slight lead of one of the two teams. In these races we think the teams are relatively close. Specifically, we have:

1. Spain (45%) prevailing over Germany (27%)
2. France (45%) prevailing over Portugal (27%)

For these two matches, the probability of a draw is increased (28%) and any outcome is not unlikely. 

Table 2: Table with the odds of the outcome of the matches for the round of 8 of the European Championship 2024.

Figure 1 gives in more detail the odds for each score for each of the 8 matches of the round of 16.

Figure  1: Probability Chart of possible scores for the round of 16 of the 2024 European Championship.

Bibliography for reading fans

• Dixon, M.J. and Coles, S.G. (1997), Modelling Association Football Scores and Inefficiencies in the Football Betting Market. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics), 46, 265-280.
• Karlis, D. and Ntzoufras, I. (2003), Analysis of sports data by using bivariate Poisson models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series D (The Statistician), 52, 381-393. 
• Lee A.J. (1997). Modeling Scores in the Premier League: Is Manchester United Really the Best?  Chance, 10, 15-19.
• Maher, M.J. (1982), Modelling association football scores. Statistica Neerlandica, 36, 109-118.
• Reep, C., & Benjamin, B. (1968). Skill and Chance in Association Football. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 131, 581-585.

The Magic Equations of the statistical model