EUROCASH #5: France have more '£100m players' than any of their Euro rivals
With well over £1 billion worth of talent in their likely XI according to our model, Mbappé et al will be too lively for the Group of Death
France will begin Euro 2024 as the team ranked highest by FIFA of all 24 competing nations - at No.2 in the world, behind only Argentina - and as the bookmakers’ second favourites behind England, but only by a tiny margin.
In their last 20 matches, dating back to the group stage of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, they have lost just three times in 90 minutes. Two of those defeats were in friendlies against Germany, in March this year, 2-0 in Lyon, and in September last year, 2-1 in Dortmund, in a match where their talismanic forward Kylian Mbappé didn’t play.
The remaining defeat was at the end of November 2022, in Qatar, in a dead rubber final group game at the World Cup, 1-0 against Tunisia. France were already effectively assured of progressing to the last 16 as Group D winners, and had rested several key players from the starting XI, including Mbappé.
France went on to lose the 2022 World Cup final to Lionel Messi’s Argentina of course, but that was only settled after extra time and penalties. Mbappé still ended up as the tournament’s leading goalscorer.
France have contested three of the last four major tournament finals, finishing as runners-up at Euro 2016, winning the 2018 World Cup, and finishing as runners-up at the 2022 World Cup.
They completed their Euro 2024 warm-up programme with an underwhelming 0-0 draw against Jesse Marsch’s Canada in Bordeaux on Sunday. The starting line-up was not full strength and Mbappé - whose recently confirmed move to Real Madrid is the snip of the century - only came on in the 74th minute.
When you consider the depth of France’s squad, however, they are on a par with anyone at Euro 2024, and perhaps better than anyone. This preview series is predicated on a Sporting Intelligence financial model based on the insurable values of the players involved, and it predicts France will certainly win Group D, aka the ‘group of death’ even though Group B is arguably tougher.
The pre-tournament betting odds suggest France will win Group D at a canter, as do the current FIFA world rankings, and Sporting Intelligence’s resident pundit for this preview series, Thomas Hitzlsperger.
Between now and Friday, I'm going to try to predict how the event will unfold, group by group, using that ‘insurable value’ 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, last Friday, in this piece. It’s free for anyone wanting to read it and will save me repeating all the detail every day in this series.
Before we get into the minutiae of the players’ insurable values in Group D, here’s a basic recap of the four nations contesting it.
Poland 🇵🇱
Coach: Michał Probierz, Polish, 51.
Star man (in £ terms): Jakub Kiwior.
Other star men: Most capped: Robert Lewandowski (49). Most goals: Lewandowski (82). Young gun (best player under 23): Nicola Zalewski.
Previous Euros best: Quarter-finals: 2016.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Belgium, Bulgaria, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the USA. Their average age is 28.2, with seven players aged above 30, the oldest being Kamil Grosicki at 36.
Netherlands 🇳🇱
Coach: Ronald Koeman.
Star man (in £ terms): Matthijs de Ligt.
Other star men: Most capped: Daley Blind (107). Most goals: Memphis Depay (45). Young guns (best players under 23): Ryan Gravenberch, Xavi Simons, Bart Verbruggen.
Previous Euros best: Winners: 1988. Semi-finals: 1976, 1992, 2000, 2004.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Spain. Their average age is just above 27, with four players aged above 30, and Daley Blind the oldest at 34.
Austria 🇦🇹
Coach: Ralf Rangnick, German, 65.
Star man (in £ terms): Nicolas Seiwald.
Other star men: Most capped: Marko Arnautović (112). Most goals: Arnautović (36). Young guns (best players 23 or under): Seiwald, Patrick Wimmer.
Previous Euros best: Last 16, Euro 2020 (in 2021).
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Austria, Belgium, Norway, England, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Their average age is 27.3, with five players aged above 30, and Arnautović the oldest at 35.
France 🇫🇷
Coach: Didier Deschamps.
Star man (in £ terms): Kylian Mbappé.
Other star men: Most capped: Olivier Giroud (132). Most goals: Giroud (57). Young guns (best players under 23): Eduardo Camavinga, Warren Zaïre-Emery, Bradley Barcola.
Previous Euros best: Winners: 1984, 2000. Runners-up: 2016.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in England, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Spain. Their average age is 27.4 , with five players aged above 30, and Giroud the oldest at 37.
Group D overview
Of the 20 most valuable players in Group D, 13 are French, six are Dutch, one is Austrian and all 20 are worth at least £55m. As you can see in the graphic below, the French squad’s collective insurable value is almost three-quarters of a billion more than their next best rival and almost six and a half times as much as weakest team in the group. 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 No.16, and therefore Euro 2024’s toughest group)
Thomas Hitzlsperger’s picks for 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 in any given game.