Pablo Luna
@hellorich
It’s a year later than planned, but Euro 2020 is finally here. After five years without the continent’s biggest football tournament, anticipation is high.
Unlike in previous years, the tournament won’t be held in a single host country, with several leading cities around Europe hosting major games. This will all kick off in Rome on Friday, June 11, and will conclude on Sunday, July 12 at London’s Wembley Stadium, which will also host the semi-finals.
In-between, there will be fixtures in Saint Petersburg, Baku, Munich, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow, and Seville. It’s a truly international competition.
With the tournament almost upon us, fans are eyeing up the fixtures and working out who they’re going to put money on to win this year. Here’s our guide to this years to betting on this year’s Euros.
The tournament will kick off with Turkey Vs Italy, the first clash in the group match stage. During this stage of the tournament, there will be three group matches per day, with Turkey and Italy joined in Group A by Wales and Switzerland.
Group B is home to Denmark, Finland, Belgium and Russia, and Group C is where you’ll find the Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria and North Macedonia. But all eyes will be on Group D, where England and Scotland will face off against each other, as well as Croatia and the Czech Republic.
Group E has Spain, Sweden, Poland and Slovakia, and finally, Group F has reigning champions Portugal alongside France, Germany and Hungary. But of these, who are the bookies calling favourites to win the whole tournament outright?
According to the latest odds from 888 Sport, there’s a good chance that football might well and truly becoming home this summer. After an impressive World Cup performance in 2018, smashing expectations to make it to the semi-finals, England is now among the favourites to win the tournament for the first time in a blue moon.
The sportsbook offer 9/2 odds on a victory for Gareth Southgate’s squad, which includes star players from the 2018 lineup including Harry Kane. Crunching the numbers of all available odds, and England have a 16.7% chance to win outright, tying for first as the most likely winners.
England’s biggest competition can be found across the Channel. France is looking more dangerous than ever, with the squad marked as the second-best on the planet by FIFA world rankings (compared to England’s fourth), there is some stiff competition here.
And let’s not forget that France triumphed in the 2018 World Cup, with their Euro’s squad closely resembling the winning team from three years ago. England may be overdue for a big win – but France would certainly like to follow up a World Cup with a European one.
After all, they have to make up for a humiliating loss to Portugal in the 2016 finals, in a 1-0 loss at home. They’ll be doing all they can to avoid another embarrassing upset, after that ill-fated Paris final.
Portugal is currently the sixth favourites to win, with the other teams in the five favourites currently Belgium, Spain and Germany. But as we get closer to the group stage, time will tell whether any of these heavyweight teams will be able to prove themselves – or if there’ll be a major underdog upset.
There are several ways to bet on the Euros. For starters, you could bet on each individual match, with bets now being taken for the group stage matches – in Group D, England is currently favourites to win all of their fixtures.
But before a single player has set foot on the pitch, you can also place a bet on who will win the tournament outright. These are known as “outright winner” bets and are worth a lot more prior to the start of the tournament.
When there are only two teams left, the odds won’t be as high as they are at the start. An outright winner bet lets you make bold predictions about the winner – and potentially reap the rewards later on.
And if you really want to maximise your winnings, you could always try an accumulator bet. Instead of just betting on one game or overall outcome, here you bet on several games at once.
As we enter the group stages, you can put money down on all the games within a group. But you can only win if all your predictions are correct – so make sure to follow the latest odds if you want to be in with a chance of cashing in.
With the Euros just weeks away, and managers putting the finishing touches on their tournament squads, fans are making their big predictions as to who will lift the trophy at the end. If you think you know who will make it all the way, it might be time to put your money where your mouth is.
