How far will England go at Euro 2020?

The European Championships have kicked off, and so if you’re English, your main question is: how far can England go? The hype is there, and bookmakers are making England as much as joint favourites with France.

I have to confess, I’m a little more sceptical. It’s not based on feelings, or hopes, but on the data. If you use Elo ratings and calculate them over the last however many years, England don’t come close to France or Belgium. Sure, there have been moments, not least beating Belgium at Wembley recently.

As the plot below shows, England are in a pack with Spain, Italy and Portugal. Good company to keep, no doubt, but most folk are also ruling out Italy.

However, my scepticism comes from the simulations I’ve done of the tournament. They’re imperfect, of course — based only on Elo ratings — but they map out likely pathways that England might follow through the tournament — and attach probabilities to them.

If England win their group (63% chance), they face the runners up in Group F — about a 30% chance of being Germany, France or Portugal. They’ll have home advantage at Wembley, but will that be enough again tough opposition? Then if they win, they face Spain in Rome with fairly high likelihood (54%), as winners of Group E.

Finish second in their group (23% chance) and they face the runners up in Group E — so most likely Sweden (40%) in Copenhagen (essentially an away match), but possibly Spain (23%). Win that and it’s off to St Petersburg to face, most likely, France (40%).

The only way to escape the Group E-F block is to finish 3rd and hope for the best. But even then, they might still face the winner of Group E (Spain likely) in Glasgow, and the other two possibilities are facing the winners of Group C in Budapest — likely the Netherlands, or Group B — likely Belgium.

To win a major competition, you have to beat the best teams. Hence whichever way England might make it to the latter stages, they will have to face good teams. But the draw pits them very quickly against top teams by virtue of the nature of Group F.

So I’m sceptical of how far England will go. But hoping to be proved wrong!