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Today marks the start of the European Football Championship - EURO2020. Eurofootball.com helps you get to know it better and provides some predictions that may or may not come true, but that will certainly make watching this championship more interesting. Here are 6 bold predictions for EURO2020:
Euro2016 semi-finalists Wales will not advance from their group in this championship. The Welsh national team performed well in the 2016 European Championship, but this year only 9 players from that team remain, and their leader Gareth Bale is older and different from what he was 5 years ago. Another thing - their group is really strong. The Swiss are always stable and have a good national team base, while the Turks have their successful "Lille" nucleus with Yazici, Celik, and Yilmaz, who might even be potentially stronger than Wales. As for the Italians, I think it's unnecessary to talk about them.
Italy will not concede a single goal until the quarterfinals and will continue their streak. The Italian national team has won 8 matches in a row without conceding a goal. Although some matches were against opponents like Lithuania, Estonia, or San Marino, they also faced Poland, the Czech Republic - participants of EURO2020. And it's not very important with which national teams Italy played, keeping a clean sheet in 8 consecutive matches is a significant achievement. Meanwhile, in their group, the Italians have matches against Wales, Turkey, and Switzerland - also not the strongest national teams. Finishing first in the group, they could face a slightly weaker opponent in the quarterfinals, so the streak of "clean sheets" could continue.
One of the French trio will become the top scorer of the championship. It's always very difficult to predict who might be the top scorer of such a short tournament, but Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema, and Antoine Griezmann are simply an incredibly strong French trio. They will create opportunities for each other, their understanding of each other is really good, as we saw in friendly matches. So if one of them exploits his opportunities slightly better, there is a chance that he will win the golden boot.
Cristiano Ronaldo will not score more goals in this championship than Teemu Pukki or Burak Yilmaz. Naturally, Ronaldo is a bit older than he was in 2016 when he scored 3 goals. Perhaps he will score as many in this championship, which is not bad, but Teemu Pukki and Burak Yilmaz are the leaders of Finland and Turkey, respectively, so they might also score around 3 goals each. This prediction may seem very bold at first, but there is logic behind it.
The Netherlands will not reach the quarterfinal. The Dutch national team had high expectations for this championship just a year ago, but then the defensive leader of the team Virgil van Dijk suffered a cruciate ligament injury, and Ronald Koeman, who had been conducting the team well, took over the reins of Barcelona. Since then, everything has changed, and now the team under Frank de Boer really does not inspire, and even Frank's brother has been very critical of the Dutch national team's game. In short, they will want to achieve more than just the quarterfinals, but I don't see that on the horizon.
The World Cup runners-up will experience a fiasco and at best will finish 3rd in their group. The Croatian national team has aged, Luka Modric is no longer the dominating player he was in 2018 when he won the Ballon d'Or, and main engines like Rakitic or Mandzukic are gone. Probably even Zlatko Dalic's tactical savvy won't help. There may be some hope because the group is not the hardest, and it's certainly possible for Croatia to beat the Czechs and Scots. However, they also have their arguments, such as home advantage for Scotland. There are some good players like Brekalo, Rebic, Pasalic, but the core of the team is aged, and perhaps the inevitable generational change is coming.
Andrius Kriščiūnas
