EUROCASH #2: Wirtz, Musiala and Havertz mean you can bank on Germany in Group A
Sporting Intelligence's predictive model for Euro 2024 says Germany will win Group A, and forecasts a race for second and third that may require every tie-breaker in the UEFA rule book
Euro 2024 hosts Germany will top Group A of the European Championship. That is what the pre-tournament betting odds suggest will happen, and also what the current FIFA world rankings suggest will happen, and what Sporting Intelligence’s resident pundit for this preview series, Thomas Hitzlsperger, thinks will happen.
It is also what Sporting Intelligence’s financial model, based on the insurable values of the players involved in Euro 2024, suggests will happen. The difference is, with this model you can see exactly why Germany emerge as clear favourites.
And why it predicts the closest imaginable race for second place between the remaining teams: Switzerland, Hungary and Scotland.
Over the next seven days, I'm going to try to predict how the event will unfold, group by group, using that model. It's a refined - and hopefully improved - version of a model that has worked before, at two World Cups (in 2014 and 2018), and not been far off in a third.
I went into the rationale and methodology that underpins the model, yesterday, in this piece. That remains free for everyone and will save me repeating all the methodological detail every day in this series.
Before we get into the financial minutiae of the players’ insurable values, here’s a basic recap of the four nations contesting Group A.
Germany 🇩🇪
Coach: Julian Nagelsmann, German, 36.
Star man (in £ terms): Kai Havertz. Value revealed below.
Other star men: Most capped: Thomas Müller (129). Most goals: Müller (45). Young guns (best players under 23): Florian Wirtz, Jamal Musiala.
Previous Euros best: Winners 1972, 1980, 1996. Runners-up: 1976, 1992, 2008.
Squad notes: The whole squad play their club football either in the Bundesliga, La Liga or the Premier League. Their average age is 28.6, and nine of the players are aged above 30, including 38-year-old Manuel Neuer and 34-year-olds Thomas Müller and Toni Kroos.
Scotland 🏴
Coach: Steve Clarke, Scottish, 60.
Star man (in £ terms): Kieran Tierney.
Other star men: Most capped: Andy Robertson (70). Most goals: John McGinn (18). Young gun (best player 23 or under): Billy Gilmour.
Previous Euros best: Have only qualified for three Euros, in 1992, 1996 and 2020 and failed to get past the group stage each time.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in England, Scotland, Denmark, Saudi Arabia and the USA. Their average age is 28.8, with eight players aged above 30.
Hungary 🇭🇺
Coach: Marco Rossi, Italian, 59.
Star man (in £ terms): Dominik Szoboszlai.
Other star men: Most capped: Ádám Nagy (80). Most goals: Roland Sallai, Dominik Szoboszlai (both 12). Young gun (best player under 23): Milos Kerkez.
Previous Euros best: Third place in 1964. Round of 16 in 2016.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Hungary, Germany, Croatia, Cyprus, England, France, Italy, South Korea, Switzerland and the USA. Their average age is just shy of 28, with eight aged above 30, three of them goalkeepers.
Switzerland 🇨🇭
Coach: Murat Yakin, Swiss, 49.
Star man (in £ terms): Manuel Akanji.
Other star men: Most capped: Granit Xhaka (124). Most goals: Xherdan Shaqiri (31). Young guns (best player 23 or under): Zeki Amdouni.
Previous Euros best: Quarter-finals in 2020.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Germany, Italy, France, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece and the USA. Their average age is just over 27, with nine aged above 30, and 35-year-old goalkeeper Yann Sommer is the eldest.
Group A overview
Of the 10 most valuable players in Group A, by our metric, no fewer than seven of them are German, including the four most valuable, worth more than £100m each. The other three in that top 10 comprise one player each from Hungary, Switzerland and Scotland, as you can see in the graphic below.
Germany’s total collective squad value is several multiples of any of the other three nations in the group, with those nations relatively closely matched on our Eurocash scale.
The graphic also contains:
The total squad value for each nation
How our data ranks them
How the bookmakers reckon they will perform
Each nation's world ranking (which is an average of No25, and therefore a middling group)
Thomas Hitzlsperger’s picks for the group winner and runner-up
The value of each nation’s MVP by insurable value
There’s also a projected final table for the group, and beneath the graphic we’ll explore how a nation with a more expensive squad won’t necessarily field the higher value team, or win, in any given game.