Ahead of the European Championships, everyone was looking to the usual suspects like France, Belgium, Germany and Spain for their tournament favourites, but the historical data does not suggest that the pre-competition favourites always come out on top.

In fact, in half of the editions of the European Championships since 1980, a team who finished second or third in their group went on the win the tournament, leaving some of the tournament favourites scratching their heads. 

The most obvious and most recent example is Portugal, who won the Euros five years ago despite finishing third in the group stage after drawing all three matches. Fernando Santos’ side took advantage of the new 24-team tournament format to go on and win the competition against the odds.

When you combine the fact that, historically, the most in-form team from the group stage doesn’t win the tournament that often, along with the opportunity for teams finishing third in their group to advance to the knockout stages, then it would be no surprise to see a relatively unfancied outfit go on to overcome the Euro 2020 odds and lift the trophy at Wembley on July 11^th.

Stats like this will be encouragement to teams who perhaps haven’t made the best of starts to the tournament, for example Poland and Russia, or for teams who simply aren’t much fancied to top their group. The likes of Sweden, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Switzerland are all the kind of outfits who you could imagine going on a deep run if they can scrape through to the knockout stages.

The key takeaway is not to jump on the bandwagon of teams who have started well. Whilst Italy and Belgium have made strong starts to their group stage campaigns, the lessons we’ve learned in the past tell us never to rule out the underdogs.