When you make it to the finals of Euro 2016, you are allocated to one of six groups. The top two teams from each group, after three matches, get a pass into the round of 16. An additional four teams also make it through.
But should we expect to see there? One way to calculate it is to work out how tough each group is. By taking each team’s world rankings and averaging them, we can see how tough each group is.
| Group | Teams | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| A | France, Switzerland, Romania, Albania | 24 |
| B | England, Wales, Slovakia, Russia | 22.5 |
| C | Germany, Poland, Northern Ireland, Ukraine | 18.75 |
| D | Croatia, SPain, Czech Republic, Turkey | 20.25 |
| E | Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium | 20.5 |
| F | Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Austria | 18 |
A lower number represents a tough group and a higher number represents an easier group. This suggests England is in one of the easiest groups: only group A has a lower average world ranking, and this does not factor in the home-field advantage that France has.
We can then compare the team ranking to the average group ranking to see who should find it easiest to quality.
| Team | Difference |
|---|---|
| Belgium | +18.5 |
| Germany | +14.75 |
| Spain | +14.25 |
| England | +11.5 |
| Ireland | -12.5 |
| Sweden | -14.5 |
| Iceland | -16 |
| Albania | -18 |
I have shown the top and bottom four here. The other home nations do not find themselves at the bottom of the table, which is positive news too. Having said this, the difficultly of the group makes little difference: all of these teams are in the same order as if you had just taken the world rankings. So how tough your group is, is probably not a factor.
Don't have time to check my blog? Get a weekly email with all the new posts. This is my personal blog, so obviously it is 100% spam free.
Tags: euro 2016, football, sport, stats
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 18th, 2016 at 10:44 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.