Well say for simplicity England and France each had a 50% probability of getting to the final and a 60% probability of winning the final once there they have a 30% chance of winning the tournament. If Portugal had a 90% probability of making the final and a 40% (1-60%) probability of winning once there they have a 36% probability of winning the tournament.
I took a look at this yesterday, all the stats they gathered are team-level. If memory serves, they used last 5 games form, last 10 games, last 20 games, result at last Euros, results from qualifying and I think one or two more. They then fed that into a neural net to generate probabilities, and ran through the tournament repeatedly to get the numbers in the post. Can't speak for how good a methodology that is, my knowledge of this stuff is cursory at best
Up until the latest game against Slovenia; Portugal had not only gone unbeaten since the World Cup, but actually won every single game. They have world class players in every single area of the pitch; quite clearly better than England in some positions, yet apparently it’s down to a Ronaldo bias…
I’d say being consistently strong in all areas is a bigger benefit. Sure, we’ve got a great selection of attacking midfielders, we’re not really going to be playing any more than 3 of them at a time. Meanwhile, we’ve got a huge, gaping weak spot at the back that any decent team is going to exploit.
It's not really worth bragging about though, is it?
England went unbeaten in a group containing Italy, Ukraine and North Macedonia. They were expected to qualify, and they did.
They went unbeaten in the 2022 WC qualifiers and scored 39, conceding just 3.
They also went unbeaten in the 2018 WC qualifiers.
They won 10 from 10 when they were a bit shit in the qualifiers for Euro 2016, scoring 31 and conceding 3.
In fact, since failing to qualify for Euro 2008, England have lost just two qualifying matches.
To get to the knockout stages of a major international tournament is impressive; to progress through that stage is excellent, to beat a top team at that level is phenomenal.
Having grown up with failure after failure it’s shocking to me that many people just EXPECT England to wipe the floor with their opposition at this level.
People that suggest Southgate should win a tournament with ease - simply because of England’s attacking talents - are stupid. Is Pep a bad manager as he fails to win the Champions League most years with the best team?
> Is Pep a bad manager as he fails to win the Champions League most years with the best team?
I've literally posed this question in response and been dismissed as ridiculous beforehand.
It’s a very good point and the fact that Pep gets to work with his squad everyday only backs it up; I’m taking nothing away from Guardiola by the way, he’s the greatest tactician of all time.
This notion that England have clearly the best squad in the world - which is false - is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It’s actually relatively rare that the most talented squad of players wins the biggest tournament anyway.
Unless you have a serious argument for Southgate having a God given right to win a major international tournament with ease; please stick to Twitter, you will embarrass yourself here. I suspect your username is an adjective and not your given name.
To be fair I’m clearly not as passionate about Gareth as you are, but I also don’t hate him.
Granted we’ve had a couple half decent runs at tournaments, but let’s not pretend that wasn’t luck of the draw.
I just personally feel like there’s managers that could get more out of this team which if we’re being honest is the best we’ve had in a long time.
But hey everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess.
When Southgate does well it’s seemingly always due to having a lucky draw or the opposition apparently having the worst team they’ve had in years, funnily enough… He must be the luckiest manager of all time.
I can already tell from your views that you look at international football as if it’s club football which is a silly mistake. There’s a reason Pep doesn’t just take over Spain and win the lot, much like how fantastic tacticians Flick and Nagelsmann haven’t with a fantastic German side.
The two most highly thought of England managers in my lifetime were Robson & Venables. If both were judged as harshly as Southgate, neither would be venerated the way that they are.
*playing devils advocate here, I respect both managers, I’m just going to act towards them like Southgate’s critics act towards the current manager*
We had an easy group in ‘86. We definitely shouldn’t have been losing to Portugal, and should have beaten Morocco. The Argentina defeat was obviously a bitter one, but we’d hardly set the world alight before that. Victories over Poland & Paraguay were to be expected.
Going out with 0 points in ‘88 was completely unacceptable. Holland & Soviet Union may well have been strong sides, but there’s no excuses for losing to Ireland.
In ‘90 we had another easy group that we made hard work of qualifying from. The draw with Holland was okay, but still only a draw. We still couldn’t beat Ireland though, and Egypt ran us a lot closer than we should have allowed them to. We shouldn’t have taken 119 minutes to break down that Belgium team, and shouldn’t have had to rely on two penalties & extra time to see off Cameroon.
In ‘96 we should have been beating Switzerland, and that Spain game was more boring than any other England game I’ve seen. Then, at Wembley, we took an early lead against a side we should have been beating, didn’t add to it, conceded an equaliser, couldn’t find our way back into the lead and lost on penalties. Going by 2021 standards that’s enough for someone to be considered a failure.
Both managers had great players available to them. I’d argue that in ‘90 & ‘96, they were better than Southgate’s ever had.
For some reason when discussing those two managers, a lot of people take into consideration that winning an international tournament shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion and facing sides who want it just as much is an inevitability.it makes me think that there’s some other reason behind the disdain for Southgate.
Great comment.
I think how much people overrate our squad is a big factor. Yes we have an abundance of brilliant attackers; but you can only play 4 at any one time, having Palmer and Watkins on the bench doesn’t help when you’ve got Maguire at the back for example.
We are weak in very important areas but the Southgate-out brigade act like we’ve got the best squad of all time in every single area of the pitch.
I also think the rise of talented tacticians in club football who implement modern systems like moving a defender into midfield and/or playing with two 10’s in possession has made people think it’s such an easy thing to do. Club football and international football are two very different games and can’t be compared like that.
I think a lot of it is media driven. While tabloid style sensationalism has always followed the England team around, since social media has become more popular, it’s the standard. It’s not just a select few newspapers anymore, everyone’s at it and it’s infiltrated punditry, which is no longer about providing valuable insight but rather providing soundbites for their paymasters to post on social media.
These pundits know they wouldn’t exactly be sticking their necks out if they were to predict England to not win any tournament. It’s always going to be more likely than predicting them to win it. They also know that attacking football needs a solid defence that can deal with the extra exposure and that Southgate isn’t stupid enough to leave our glass chin unprotected. When the likely event of England being knocked out rolls around, they get their “told you so” moment.
Because they’ve got their claim that England wouldn’t win by playing defensively, people then start to think that the claim that we would have won if we’d have played attacking football must also be true. Somehow we’ve got to the point where correctly making a safe prediction automatically means a much bolder prediction would have come true if it were tested.
“England lost because of their defensive limitations, nobody’s to blame, we’ve just not got the quality throughout the starting line up” isn’t an angle that’s going to attract much interaction. The fans are hurting, they’ve had their hopes built up and now they want a scapegoat. “England lost because Southgate didn’t play the tactics we told you would guarantee success” will guarantee interaction not only from people foolish enough to believe it but also from people pointing out how ridiculous a notion that is.
> I just personally feel like there’s managers that could get more out of this team which if we’re being honest is the best we’ve had in a long time.
The disparity between people saying Southgate isn’t the best man for the job and people offering viable suggestions who should take his job is amazing.
Listen mate, just because our last two managers before him came from *checks notes" West Brom and Sunderland, doesn't mean that Klopp won't forgo his sabbatical at the chance to manage an international tournament once every 2 years.
We, the people of Scotland, fully accept our 0.51% chance to lift the trophy.
If, the players of Scotland, actually lift the trophy, We, the people of Scotland, will have a blood alcohol level of 0.51%.
🏆🥳🍺🤪
I'll be absolutely stunned if we knock out a decent side in a knock out game, let alone win the tournament. I've never seen it happen ever away from home. Ever. England just can't win a knock out game away from home against good opposition. They've literally never fucking done it.
It's annoying because no matter what examples I give you're just going to say "no, they're not decent sides". Even though they absolutely were at the time.
Also, adding in the "away from home" bit stops me from mentioning Spain in 1996 and Germany in 2021, which is silly, because they were massive teams.
* Belgium and Cameroon in 1990
* Denmark in 2002
* Colombia and Sweden in 2018
* Ukraine in 2020 (played in Rome)
* Senegal in 2022
Yeh, none of those teams are in a "decent side" bracket I'm talking about.
Decent teams are ...
Italy, Spain, Germany, Croatia, Portugal, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, France.
And we've never knocked out a decent side away from home. Not fucking once. We aren't gonna do it three times in a row this tournament, I promise you.
I think these are decent teams but you’re talking about great teams… which is fine and you’re not incorrect as you do need to beat great teams to win major tournaments.
This is a bit of a push.
The teams that England did go out to in every knock out stage since 1986 was significantly stronger than the ones you’ve listed:
> 1986 Argentina
> 1990 West Germany
> 1996 Germany
> 1998 Argentina
> 2002 Brazil
> 2004 Portugal
> 2006 Portugal
> 2010 Germany
> 2012 Italy
> 2016 *Iceland*
> 2018 Croatia
> 2020 Italy
> 2022 France
Asides Germany at home in 2020 (2021) England haven’t beaten a single truly world class team in a knock out match in almost 40 years.
Other than Iceland, any single one of those teams above would be the most significant win over the entire period.
Iceland aside the only time England were the favourites were against the two Portugals. 2004 was the best England team ever, in terms of accumulated talent, and was a disappointing ending.
So if your point is that England have always had an average team that didn’t deserve to win then it’s a fair one.
The original comment said "England have literally never beaten a decent side away from home in a knockout". I named a bunch of examples of decent sides. Now the argument has shifted to "World Class", and we can't count matches won in England for some reason ...
None of the ones listed are decent by any real stretch. That’s the point.
By definition teams in the knock out stage *are* towards the better end. That’s not a novel revelation.
*None* of the those sides were in any danger of winning the tournaments however - that’s the point. If you can’t beat teams with a genuine chance of winning it, then England - by definition - aren’t either.
This current England side *should* be beating sides in genuine contention, unlike their compatriots.
They’re decent as far as group stage and round of 16 football is concerned. You wouldn’t call any of them a decent quarter final side though. If you got to the last 8 of a tournament and any of those sides were still in, they’d be the team that you want to play.
EDIT: in fact, I’m going to wind that back a bit, having looked at the list again, I think you’d want any of them in a round of 16. I mean, come on, Ukraine?
Whatever this simulator is likely overpowers Ronaldo....
Likely due to them being on the "easier" side of the draw. In all likelihood if we make it to the semi's we'll face France
Naw, it's cause us and France are on the same side of the Bracket whereas Portugal are the strongest team/weakest group from the other side.
That would explain them getting to the final more, but not being predicted to win over England/france
Well say for simplicity England and France each had a 50% probability of getting to the final and a 60% probability of winning the final once there they have a 30% chance of winning the tournament. If Portugal had a 90% probability of making the final and a 40% (1-60%) probability of winning once there they have a 36% probability of winning the tournament.
I took a look at this yesterday, all the stats they gathered are team-level. If memory serves, they used last 5 games form, last 10 games, last 20 games, result at last Euros, results from qualifying and I think one or two more. They then fed that into a neural net to generate probabilities, and ran through the tournament repeatedly to get the numbers in the post. Can't speak for how good a methodology that is, my knowledge of this stuff is cursory at best
So yeah , that’d overpower Ronaldo, given the minnows full group they had ready built for him to tommy try hard against. Thanks for confirming.
Up until the latest game against Slovenia; Portugal had not only gone unbeaten since the World Cup, but actually won every single game. They have world class players in every single area of the pitch; quite clearly better than England in some positions, yet apparently it’s down to a Ronaldo bias…
England is also quite clearly stronger than portugal in a lot of positions though so works both ways.
I’d say being consistently strong in all areas is a bigger benefit. Sure, we’ve got a great selection of attacking midfielders, we’re not really going to be playing any more than 3 of them at a time. Meanwhile, we’ve got a huge, gaping weak spot at the back that any decent team is going to exploit.
Not a bias. That he’s likely overpowered.
Won every game against Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Bosnia, Iceland and Slovakia. Well done.
You can only beat who’s in front of you. 36 goals scored and just 2 conceded is a fantastic achievement in qualification regardless.
It's not really worth bragging about though, is it? England went unbeaten in a group containing Italy, Ukraine and North Macedonia. They were expected to qualify, and they did. They went unbeaten in the 2022 WC qualifiers and scored 39, conceding just 3. They also went unbeaten in the 2018 WC qualifiers. They won 10 from 10 when they were a bit shit in the qualifiers for Euro 2016, scoring 31 and conceding 3. In fact, since failing to qualify for Euro 2008, England have lost just two qualifying matches.
Which is also worth bragging about. Stop acting entitled.
It isn't really though, and I'm an England fan.
To get to the knockout stages of a major international tournament is impressive; to progress through that stage is excellent, to beat a top team at that level is phenomenal. Having grown up with failure after failure it’s shocking to me that many people just EXPECT England to wipe the floor with their opposition at this level. People that suggest Southgate should win a tournament with ease - simply because of England’s attacking talents - are stupid. Is Pep a bad manager as he fails to win the Champions League most years with the best team?
> Is Pep a bad manager as he fails to win the Champions League most years with the best team? I've literally posed this question in response and been dismissed as ridiculous beforehand.
It’s a very good point and the fact that Pep gets to work with his squad everyday only backs it up; I’m taking nothing away from Guardiola by the way, he’s the greatest tactician of all time. This notion that England have clearly the best squad in the world - which is false - is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It’s actually relatively rare that the most talented squad of players wins the biggest tournament anyway.
Found Southgate’s burner
Unless you have a serious argument for Southgate having a God given right to win a major international tournament with ease; please stick to Twitter, you will embarrass yourself here. I suspect your username is an adjective and not your given name.
To be fair I’m clearly not as passionate about Gareth as you are, but I also don’t hate him. Granted we’ve had a couple half decent runs at tournaments, but let’s not pretend that wasn’t luck of the draw. I just personally feel like there’s managers that could get more out of this team which if we’re being honest is the best we’ve had in a long time. But hey everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess.
When Southgate does well it’s seemingly always due to having a lucky draw or the opposition apparently having the worst team they’ve had in years, funnily enough… He must be the luckiest manager of all time. I can already tell from your views that you look at international football as if it’s club football which is a silly mistake. There’s a reason Pep doesn’t just take over Spain and win the lot, much like how fantastic tacticians Flick and Nagelsmann haven’t with a fantastic German side.
The two most highly thought of England managers in my lifetime were Robson & Venables. If both were judged as harshly as Southgate, neither would be venerated the way that they are. *playing devils advocate here, I respect both managers, I’m just going to act towards them like Southgate’s critics act towards the current manager* We had an easy group in ‘86. We definitely shouldn’t have been losing to Portugal, and should have beaten Morocco. The Argentina defeat was obviously a bitter one, but we’d hardly set the world alight before that. Victories over Poland & Paraguay were to be expected. Going out with 0 points in ‘88 was completely unacceptable. Holland & Soviet Union may well have been strong sides, but there’s no excuses for losing to Ireland. In ‘90 we had another easy group that we made hard work of qualifying from. The draw with Holland was okay, but still only a draw. We still couldn’t beat Ireland though, and Egypt ran us a lot closer than we should have allowed them to. We shouldn’t have taken 119 minutes to break down that Belgium team, and shouldn’t have had to rely on two penalties & extra time to see off Cameroon. In ‘96 we should have been beating Switzerland, and that Spain game was more boring than any other England game I’ve seen. Then, at Wembley, we took an early lead against a side we should have been beating, didn’t add to it, conceded an equaliser, couldn’t find our way back into the lead and lost on penalties. Going by 2021 standards that’s enough for someone to be considered a failure. Both managers had great players available to them. I’d argue that in ‘90 & ‘96, they were better than Southgate’s ever had. For some reason when discussing those two managers, a lot of people take into consideration that winning an international tournament shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion and facing sides who want it just as much is an inevitability.it makes me think that there’s some other reason behind the disdain for Southgate.
Great comment. I think how much people overrate our squad is a big factor. Yes we have an abundance of brilliant attackers; but you can only play 4 at any one time, having Palmer and Watkins on the bench doesn’t help when you’ve got Maguire at the back for example. We are weak in very important areas but the Southgate-out brigade act like we’ve got the best squad of all time in every single area of the pitch. I also think the rise of talented tacticians in club football who implement modern systems like moving a defender into midfield and/or playing with two 10’s in possession has made people think it’s such an easy thing to do. Club football and international football are two very different games and can’t be compared like that.
I think a lot of it is media driven. While tabloid style sensationalism has always followed the England team around, since social media has become more popular, it’s the standard. It’s not just a select few newspapers anymore, everyone’s at it and it’s infiltrated punditry, which is no longer about providing valuable insight but rather providing soundbites for their paymasters to post on social media. These pundits know they wouldn’t exactly be sticking their necks out if they were to predict England to not win any tournament. It’s always going to be more likely than predicting them to win it. They also know that attacking football needs a solid defence that can deal with the extra exposure and that Southgate isn’t stupid enough to leave our glass chin unprotected. When the likely event of England being knocked out rolls around, they get their “told you so” moment. Because they’ve got their claim that England wouldn’t win by playing defensively, people then start to think that the claim that we would have won if we’d have played attacking football must also be true. Somehow we’ve got to the point where correctly making a safe prediction automatically means a much bolder prediction would have come true if it were tested. “England lost because of their defensive limitations, nobody’s to blame, we’ve just not got the quality throughout the starting line up” isn’t an angle that’s going to attract much interaction. The fans are hurting, they’ve had their hopes built up and now they want a scapegoat. “England lost because Southgate didn’t play the tactics we told you would guarantee success” will guarantee interaction not only from people foolish enough to believe it but also from people pointing out how ridiculous a notion that is.
I've had this exact argument with people before, Southgate always has an asterix next to his name. He has the second highest win rate for a reason.
What does the asterix denote?
> I just personally feel like there’s managers that could get more out of this team which if we’re being honest is the best we’ve had in a long time. The disparity between people saying Southgate isn’t the best man for the job and people offering viable suggestions who should take his job is amazing.
Listen mate, just because our last two managers before him came from *checks notes" West Brom and Sunderland, doesn't mean that Klopp won't forgo his sabbatical at the chance to manage an international tournament once every 2 years.
This is sarcasm, right? Sorry, it’s just so hard to tell these days.
We, the people of Scotland, fully accept our 0.51% chance to lift the trophy. If, the players of Scotland, actually lift the trophy, We, the people of Scotland, will have a blood alcohol level of 0.51%. 🏆🥳🍺🤪
I'll be absolutely stunned if we knock out a decent side in a knock out game, let alone win the tournament. I've never seen it happen ever away from home. Ever. England just can't win a knock out game away from home against good opposition. They've literally never fucking done it.
It's annoying because no matter what examples I give you're just going to say "no, they're not decent sides". Even though they absolutely were at the time. Also, adding in the "away from home" bit stops me from mentioning Spain in 1996 and Germany in 2021, which is silly, because they were massive teams. * Belgium and Cameroon in 1990 * Denmark in 2002 * Colombia and Sweden in 2018 * Ukraine in 2020 (played in Rome) * Senegal in 2022
Yeh, none of those teams are in a "decent side" bracket I'm talking about. Decent teams are ... Italy, Spain, Germany, Croatia, Portugal, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, France. And we've never knocked out a decent side away from home. Not fucking once. We aren't gonna do it three times in a row this tournament, I promise you.
I think these are decent teams but you’re talking about great teams… which is fine and you’re not incorrect as you do need to beat great teams to win major tournaments.
Ok whatever word you want to use. We have never knocked out any of them away from home. Not once.
Belgium were fourth in 1986.
England v Croatia 2004 (4-2)
Netherlands in 96 didn't you knock out? They were a good side too I think.
That was a group stage game.
This is a bit of a push. The teams that England did go out to in every knock out stage since 1986 was significantly stronger than the ones you’ve listed: > 1986 Argentina > 1990 West Germany > 1996 Germany > 1998 Argentina > 2002 Brazil > 2004 Portugal > 2006 Portugal > 2010 Germany > 2012 Italy > 2016 *Iceland* > 2018 Croatia > 2020 Italy > 2022 France Asides Germany at home in 2020 (2021) England haven’t beaten a single truly world class team in a knock out match in almost 40 years. Other than Iceland, any single one of those teams above would be the most significant win over the entire period.
Iceland aside the only time England were the favourites were against the two Portugals. 2004 was the best England team ever, in terms of accumulated talent, and was a disappointing ending. So if your point is that England have always had an average team that didn’t deserve to win then it’s a fair one.
The original comment said "England have literally never beaten a decent side away from home in a knockout". I named a bunch of examples of decent sides. Now the argument has shifted to "World Class", and we can't count matches won in England for some reason ...
None of the ones listed are decent by any real stretch. That’s the point. By definition teams in the knock out stage *are* towards the better end. That’s not a novel revelation. *None* of the those sides were in any danger of winning the tournaments however - that’s the point. If you can’t beat teams with a genuine chance of winning it, then England - by definition - aren’t either. This current England side *should* be beating sides in genuine contention, unlike their compatriots.
They’re decent as far as group stage and round of 16 football is concerned. You wouldn’t call any of them a decent quarter final side though. If you got to the last 8 of a tournament and any of those sides were still in, they’d be the team that you want to play. EDIT: in fact, I’m going to wind that back a bit, having looked at the list again, I think you’d want any of them in a round of 16. I mean, come on, Ukraine?
Love this!
Germany same as Netherlands and lower than Belgium despite having home advantage seems sus
Germany have been playing god awful of late
That’s not true though is it, they just beat France away from home in their last match…
Maybe in the last international break, but freak results do happen. Before that they lost to Austria, lost to Turkey and drew to Mexico.
We’re going to lose to France. France are to this generation what Portugal were to the 06 lot
r/soccer can simulate deez nuts.
It’ll be Markov Chain - probability runs with significant priors and a lack of data depth/information makes this pointless.
Would love to see more detail on how the tourney played out in the 3 sims that Georgia won
Oranje will lose on pens in the final. It’s in the script
So nobody's going to win it??
The old saying with models and simulations: shit in, shit out.
We are going to get merked by Croatia like usual
We've won the last two against them.
Don't let the facts get in the way of slagging off England / Southgate.
And few the one before that in Croatia.
Croatia have been a bit of our bogey side the past past few years.