Euro Trash

Just a brief look at some simple Under/Over 2.5 Euro stats, which you may find helpful or you may find completely useless. I say completely useless as there is a rather small sample from which we can take our Euro data.

Before Euro '96 in England, there were only two groups of four teams in the group stages, so we can really only look at Euro '96 onwards for similar types of data; and in doing so, we have this:

Not too many surprises really. In the Group Stages, the first round of eight games (2 matches in each of the four groups) the trend is towards Under 2.5 goals, as teams come out cautiously, trying not to lose rather than trying to actively win. This starts to disappear in the second batch of eight games (perhaps a team has lost their first match and now need to show a bit more resolve to continue further); and the last group of eight matches in the Group Stages moves into Over 2.5 goals, as teams go all out for victory in the hope of progressing.

The quarter finals through to the finals don't really show any trends (as mentioned, largely due to the small sample). I suppose we could take the World Cup data into consideration as this follows a similar format, but this of course introduces other variables such as the manner in which certain continental teams tend to play and the styles with which they are accustomed to. I may add-in this data just for fun though. We'll wait and see.