EURO 2024 Finals 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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It's time for the grand final of the 2024 European Championship with two great teams. On the one hand Spain, who have shown an extremely good face throughout the tournament, and on the other hand England, who seemed to "step" better on the field in the semi-final. As in the previous articles, we will make a brief review of our predictions for the semi-finals and present our "predictions" for the final.

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 quarter-finals.

Spain prevailed against France with a "commanding" turnaround from the very first half of the match. The show was stolen by the beautiful equalizer goal from the youngest player of the tournament Yamal. Based on the model, Spain had a remarkable chance of winning (33%) as this match was close. There was also a turnaround in the second semi-final, as England equalized almost immediately after conceding the goal from the Netherlands while the winning goal came in the 90th minute. England's chance of winning was marginally at 50% based on the model.    

Overall, the model correctly predicted one match (1/2) while the first semi-final was tight based on the model and team dynamics.

Table 1: Table with the odds of the outcome of the matches for the semi-finals of the European Championship 2024.

Predictions for the Final

A final is always a "different" match, even if there is a favorite. In the case of this year's European Championships, it is difficult to single out any favorites between Spain and England. The same seems to be true of the model's "predictions". Specifically, England seems to have a slight lead with a 36% chance of winning, while for Spain this probability is slightly lower, 34%. Obviously, a draw is quite a likely outcome, with a probability of around 30%.

Given these predictions and the competitive image of the teams, we expect a very strong and close encounter with the prize of the title of the European Championship 2024.  

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

Figure 1 gives in more detail the chances for the final.

Figure  1: Probability Chart of possible scores for the semi-final of the European Championship 2024.