Euro 2024: how the knockout stages are likely to unfold
The surviving teams' likely pathways through the rest of the tournament
With the group stage now completed, I’ve once again run my Euro 2024 simulations to calculate the probability of every possible outcome. First of all we’ll take a look at the big picture and then look at each quarter-final individually.
Spain are now the highest-rated team in Europe. They overtook France during the group stage after winning all three of their games while the French were held to a draw twice. After being paired with Georgia (one of the lowest-rated teams remaining), they are now also the model’s favourites to win the tournament with a 21% chance.
Despite their own struggles during the group stage, England are still (just about) Spain’s likeliest opponents in the final.
This a lot to do with the structure of the draw being kind to them. Not only have they ended up with the lowest-ranked Round of 16 opponents in Slovakia, but they have been kept apart from five of the six strongest nations until the final (Spain, France, Portugal, Belgium and hosts Germany).
Quarter-final 1: Portugal/Slovenia v France/Belgium
France are the likeliest winners from this leg of the knockout bracket. They have an almost two-in-three chance of dispatching neighbours Belgium and would have similar odds against Portugal (should the latter overcome Slovakia as expected).
However, in a semi-final against either Spain or Germany (with the latter having home advantage) this would be much closer to a coin toss.
Quarter-final 2: Spain/Georgia v Germany/Denmark
A meeting between Spain and Germany is the most likely of any quarter-final at present: there’s a 62% chance of it happening. While the Germans have a tougher opponent in the Round of 16, being on home soil provides an additional edge.
Georgia’s shock win over Portugal in their final group game has been rewarded by an even tougher test in Spain; the model is only giving them a 15% chance of prevailing (around half the probability of Denmark upsetting the hosts).
It won’t get much easier for whoever triumphs, with France, Portugal or Belgium likely to be awaiting them in the semis.
Quarter-final 3: England/Slovakia v Italy/Switzerland
As mentioned above, this is by far the easier side of the draw, particularly for England as they can’t meet a higher-rated team until the final. They have just shy of an 80% chance of defeating Slovakia, who qualified thanks to their surprise opening win over Belgium but then lost to Ukraine and were held by Romania.
The outcome of Italy versus Switzerland is more difficult to predict than it would have been at the start of the tournament due to their contrasting fortunes (and hence rating shifts) in the group stage. The Italians had to come from behind against two now-eliminated teams (Albania and Croatia) while Germany needed a late goal of their own to rescue a point against the unbeaten Swiss.
Quarter-final 4: Netherlands/Romania v Austria/Turkey
Like England, the Netherlands should be pretty happy with their potential route to the final. Their Round of 16 opponents Romania are one of the lowest-rated surviving teams, giving them a good chance of reaching the quarters.
Interestingly with surprise Group D winners Austria favoured against Turkey, there’s a 50:50 chance of some serious déjà vu in the last eight. We could see a rematch between the Netherlands and Austria in the same stadium they met in a few days ago.
Other graphics
As with the previous posts, I haven’t added every single team graphic to avoid cluttering it up, but there’s a Google Slides presentation containing all of them here.
Next steps
As we’re already 71% of the way through the number of matches that will be played, there probably won’t be too many more of these, but I’ll run the model again after the Round of 16 and see if there’s anything worth sharing. It may end up being a Note rather than a full post, as I was doing during the last round of group games.
