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Do Goals Dry Up? Betting Strategy for Euro 2024 Knockouts
This Euros got off to a phenomenal start with goals flying in across the first two match days. Match day 3 has seen things revert somewhat back to expectation but where do we go from here? Should we anticipate a lower goal rate due to the jeopardy of knockout football or will the bookies underestimate goal production from here on in? We look at the data to see what past tournaments have told us.
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🏟️ The New 24 Team Tournament
One caveat to looking at this data is the new 24-team format, which has several implications. Firstly, four of the best third-place teams of the group stage go through into the knockout rounds and we have a bigger sample of knockout games to look at. The format was changed in 2016 and this is the third edition since then.
When we look at the average across tournaments since the introduction of the group stage in 1980, we see a drop in goals since 2016. From 1980-2012, the average goals per game was 2.41. In 2016, we saw this drop to 1.92. Euro 2020, a tournament that was rescheduled after Covid, with players not in their regular cycle, saw an increase to 2.61 but at the conclusion of this stage, we have seen it fall back to 2.25.
This definitely makes sense, as with the introduction of the 3rd place qualification, teams are more incentivised to be cautious in earlier games to play out a draw or will know they don’t need a win in the final games. We saw on the final game day here that Slovakia and Romania were content to play out a draw ultimately that saw them both go through to the knockout phase.
In Euro 2016, 51 matches were played across the knockout phase with 108 goals scored. That rose to 142 goals in Euro 2020, an increase from 2.12 goals per game to 2.78. By means of comparison, the lowest average goal count at any World Cup was in 1990, with 2.21 per game. The last World Cup showed 2.68 goals scored per game and spiked to 3.31 goals per game for the knockout rounds.
At first glance, it would appear that knockout football produces a higher goal tally, and we should expect some free-scoring now we are at the business end. However, we should be cautious to make that assumption for a number of reasons …
⏱️ The Effect of Early Goals
Trading group, Trade on Sports, have run the numbers on this and provide an extensive array of tools that focus on a unique peculiarity of football matches, which sounds obvious but is often overlooked.
When there are early goals in a game, very often there are more late goals than you would expect. Because there is no accurate way of knowing if there will be an early goal (bar looking at team statistics for teams who score early, which is still full of noise), it’s difficult to predict how this plays out over the course of a knockout phase of a tournament.
If you are looking to back goals prematch this makes it a challenging endeavour but it certainly helps when you are looking at the games in play.
🏆 The Effect of the Draw
Much of the pre-tournament forecasting and betting markets on total tournament goals are based on running simulations of who is likely to play whom as they progress through the knockout phase. Once again, we see some of the folly of this endeavour with how the groups have panned out this time around.
Group C has seen Austria finish top of the group ahead of France and the Dutch in 3rd place. Group E has seen Romania top the group ahead of Belgium and strongly fancied second favourites, Ukraine have gone home. In Group F, Georgia who were given very little chance of progressing, have snuck in as one of the best 3rd place teams. Slovenia also by virtue of remaining unbeaten.
This has had a significant impact on the draw for the round of 16 and potential match ups between teams that were unlikely to be in anyone’s predictions. Will we see stubbornly defensive performances from some teams in these one-off matches and major nations struggling to break them down? (I’m looking at you England v Slovakia).
It could be argued that the draw is certainly stronger on one side than the other, with Spain, Germany, Portugal, and France (four of the main favourites) all on one side of the draw and England, Italy, and the Netherlands arguably the three other strongest teams on paper on the other side. It could be a case of big teams cancelling each other out at the quarter-final stage, or in the case of the 2022 World Cup Final, two world-class attacking sides going hammer and tong.
📹 The Effect of VAR
In the grand scale of tournament football, VAR is still a relatively new introduction and time will tell if it has increased or decreased the amount of goals that get scored. What we have seen is an increase in penalties awarded. For example, the Premier League recorded 12 more penalties given in the 2019-20 season immediately after the introduction of VAR. In the Bundesliga, a study found that VAR corrected 82% of refereeing errors, but potentially levelled out the award of the goal by correctly disallowing goals that would have previously been given. The World Cup in Russia in 2018 saw a record number of penalties awarded, although penalties have been relatively light in this tournament so far.
🥊 Conclusions and Betting Strategy for the Knockout Phase
If you were looking at betting on goals in the knockout phase, then consider everything mentioned above and try to target your games carefully:
1. Look at how particular teams match up to each other
Qualifying is not a perfect guide but can give you some more data to how teams have performed over a longer period of time.
2. Consider the crowd effect
Some teams will have notably bigger fanbases attending the games and will create a home stadium-like atmosphere, will this impact the potential of goals in the game? Perhaps if that side is considered the underdog in the betting markets.
3. Look at team xG and xGA from the tournament so far
Identify if and where some teams have got lucky and are either underperforming or overperforming on those metrics and where that might lead to more goals.
4. Check injury and team news
Are any key attacking threats, or even pivotal defensive characters, out for any of the teams?
5. Who is better rested?
Some teams such as Spain and Portugal rotated a number of players on the final match day as they were already through to the next round. This, combined with which teams have a quicker turnaround in playing their next matches can have a significant impact in a tournament where so many games are played in such a short space of time in relatively warm weather compared to the rest of the season.
6. If you don’t see a strong bet, don’t bet it
This applies to all markets but if you aren’t sure how a game might play out then it’s best-avoided pre-match and maybe one to look at in play, or just to keep your betting balance in order until the next good opportunity, as there will be plenty coming along.
* All odds displayed correctly at the time of publishing *
Written by an Andy verified content writer
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