EUROCASH #7 - The Ronaldo Conundrum and unlocking value in Martinez's Portugal
The Group F favourites were perfect in qualifying and have a squad worth £1.2 billion, but their most celebrated player is not the one our model ranks most highly
Roberto Martinez’s Portugal are highly talented but enigmatic, capable of going all the way at Euro 2024 but susceptible to stumble, if not in the group stage.
Martinez also has to cope with the Ronaldo Conundrum, which is how and whether to use CR7™ at different points in Germany.
Can the 39-year-old Al Nassr forward still bend games to his will and inspire his country to glory in what would surely be his last hoorah on a big international stage? Ronaldo scored more goals in Euros qualifying (10) than anyone bar Romelu Lukaku (14).
Or should youth trump experience, not least because Martinez has excellent and youthful striking options in PSG’s Gonçalo Ramos and Barcelona’s João Félix among others?
The enigmatic side of Portugal was illustrated by them being the only team in Euro 2024 qualifying to have a 100% record, winning 10 out of 10 games, scoring 36 goals (more than anyone else) and conceding just two (the fewest of any team), but then losing recent matches to Slovenia, in March, and Croatia, last Saturday.
They sort of got back on track on Tuesday evening by beating the Republic of Ireland 3-0 in their final warm-up friendly but Ireland are ranked No.60 in the world and have lost six of their last 10 games, and won two - and one of those was against Gibraltar.
Portugal’s perfect 10 wins in qualifying also requires context. Their Group J qualifying opponents were Slovakia, Luxembourg, Iceland, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Liechtenstein, a quintet currently ranked between No.48 and No.202 in the world.
In Group F, the Czech Republic (No.36 in the world), Turkey (No.40) and Georgia (No.75) will be more challenging, relatively.
In tomorrow’s eighth and final part of this Euro 2024 preview series, you’ll find out which nations Sporting Intelligence’s model predicts will reach the last 16, and how the knockout stages will unfold. The model says three teams from Group F will be in the last-16 shake-up.
Turkey’s best Euros campaign was 16 years ago in 2008, when they lost to Germany in the semi-finals. They have a poor record against Portugal but should do reasonably well against the others.
Georgia are at their first Euros and their first ever major tournament of any kind as an independent nation. They squeezed through to the main event via the play-offs, first beating Luxembourg and then winning on penalties against Greece after a 0-0 draw in the play-off final.
The Czech Republic are at an eighth successive Euros since 1996, in which time they’ve reached the quarter-finals twice, the semis once and the final once. But their 2024 squad is not close to the 1996 vintage who ended up as runners-up.
As I have been doing with every group at Euro 2024, today I'll break down what the betting markets, the FIFA world rankings and Sporting Intelligence's resident pundit for this preview series, Thomas Hitzlsperger, thinks will happen in Group F. Then we'll turn to the model I developed, based on the insurable value of the members of each squad.
I’m going to detail:
the comparable value of each squad within that model
the value of their best starting XI
the identity and value of their most valuable player
how the top 20 players in this model are distributed between the teams in the group
and finally the predicted final standings for Group F