[Rossoneri]

Cannavaro's out!

And given all the injuries, and some impressive forms of the underdogs, it wouldn't be that surprising if we have a "surprise winner", just like 2004.

[Aberlour10]

Alea iacta est

[cjames]

Poor Switzerland Very very nice playing from them, too bad they didn't get their penalty

[gwnn]

I agree. It should have been a draw. Neither team deserved a win, morally speaking.

[djehuti]

Portugal is playing sooooooooooo gooood I only see Portugal, Spain or Germany winning this one.

France and Italy are allways serious contenders but they dont have a good calendar, and they are not as strong as previous years.

[cjames]

I agree Portugal played nicely, and it was a deserved win. However, their pressure on their opponents around their own 16 did not impress me at all. The Turks could pretty much do as they wanted there, and came to a lot of passes from the wings etc, against a more effective team that would have been costly, so need to work on that for later.

[gwnn]

Austria has a cute team - too bad they are technically inferior to just about every team here.

[FrancesHinden]

helene_t, on May 28 2008, 04:35 PM, said:

Btw, I was thinking about footie yesterday. My B.Sc. (math) supervisor wrote a book about the Poisson process, in which one of his examples was the 74 world champship. He claimed that the number of goals per match followed a Poisson distribution which he thought had some negative consequences for the seriousness of the game. My Ph.D. supervisor (who used to play a lot of footie) disagreed strongly with my B.Sc. supervisor.

Since one of the main themes for my own research is random effect GLMs with a Poisson link, I would like to settle the issue by applying something similar to my modeling of last years Bermuda Bowl to footie. I have been somewhat pesimistic with respect to finding suitable data. But yesterday while I was looking at the advertisements of a bookmaker shop it struck me that it might be possible to use the odds to infer the stochastic model which the bookmakers subconsciously rely on. (Of course there is the danger that the bookmakers might use some statistical tool for computing the odds, in which case I would be reverse-engineering that tool which would not be so interesting).

I would say that the problem with this model is that it is exceptionally unlikely to be the way the bookies _actually_ set their odds.

In practice, the odds are set so that the bookmakers make a profit. This means that if they started with (say) Netherlands at 3-1 for a match against France with France at 2-1 (and the draw oods set to give them a small profit margin), but lots and lots of people bet on the Netherlands, they would shorten the odds on NL and lengthen the ones on France to get more people to bet on France.

You see this happening because the odds on the 'home' team are always shorter than results indicate because people like to bet on their own team, rather than rationally.

Their aim is that when all the betting has stopped, they are indifferent to the actual result of the match. If they have taken £w in bets, and have to pay out £x, £y or £z depending on the result, I expect that they are always planning for (£x+£y+£z) < £x, and ideally for x, y and z all to be about the same.

I know this doesn't happen in practice, because you do hear about bookmakers making big losses when something extraordinary happens but I think it's generally true.

This gives you two approaches:
i) Believe in the 'wisdom of crowds' i.e. that everyone betting all over the world between them knows what the right odds are, and the odds quoted tend to this model.

ii) Catch the 'opening' odds quoted before anyone has put any money on

(I've made all of this post up, I don't have any actual knowledge- but it convinced me!)

[helene_t]

Thanks Frances, that makes sense. Maybe an analysis of bookmakers' odds would be difficult to interpret because it's unclear if it reflects the bookmakers' belief wrt football or bookmakers' belief wrt gamblers' behaviour. Also, what you writes suggests that bookmakers are risk averse.

[helene_t]

whereagles, on May 28 2008, 03:50 PM, said:

yes. their beer belly doesn't let them see the ball when it's on the floor

Hence the infamous post-mortem question: How big is your belly? Surely you weren't looking at the ball.

[han]

Somewhat surprising to me that Spain received 0 votes.

[Codo]

han, on Jun 9 2008, 08:11 PM, said:

Somewhat surprising to me that Spain received 0 votes.

Maybe Gonzalo did not vote and we have no more spanish people here?

Or they are all realistic enough to vote for someone who is able to win a big tourney- like France, Italy or Germany.

It is always the same:
Italy struggles in the qualifiers, are close to loose the quarterfinal and win the final- or they lose against Germany.

All Germans are unhappy about the way their heros play, we know that our technical resources are limited. But we reach the final more often then any other european nation.

England and Spain have powerful players, they are "allways" favourite for the title.
And they alwyays fail remarkably in the qualifier or latest in the quarterfinal.

So, to bet on them is always a loosing bet.

[Walddk]

Codo, on Jun 9 2008, 01:50 PM, said:

All Germans are unhappy about the way their heros play, we know that our technical resources are limited. But we reach the final more often then any other european nation.

Last night, as an exception to the rule, Germany actually played attractive football, but somehow they always manage to reach the knockout stages of European and World Championships - often semi-finals and final.

However, the win yesterday was Germany's first in European Championships since 1996.

Roland

[P_Marlowe]

han, on Jun 9 2008, 06:11 AM, said:

Somewhat surprising to me that Spain received 0 votes.

Similar surprising is, that the defending champion did
not get any single vote at all.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[helene_t]

Maybe the poll results can be explained by the theory that most voters confused footie with bridge.

[han]

Marlowe, were you seriously expecting votes for Greece?

I think Spain actually has a decent chance this time, about as good as Russia.

[P_Marlowe]

han, on Jun 9 2008, 08:04 AM, said:

Marlowe, were you seriously expecting votes for Greece?

I think Spain actually has a decent chance this time, about as good as Russia.

Not seriously, but they did win the last championship not with pure
luck alone, they won as a team ... and their coach is pretty good
in making things happen again, a german coach with lots of
experience.

And I would say Greece is as good as Spain, they may not be as
good with regards to technique, but they can fight, something that
Spain and other teams are not able.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[hotShot]

At the World Cup 2006 10 teams in the round of 16 where from Europe, 6 making it to the round of 8. From the semi final on it turned into a European Championship.
Today we will see group C with the finalists from 2006 and the Netherlands who made it into round of 16 2 years ago.
Tomorrow we will see the defending champion and 2 teams that made the round of 16 2 years ago.

I think we will see Italy, France, Portugal and Germany in the round of 8.
I won't be surprised to see Russia and Sweden there too, but in that group anything is possible. I think Croatia will make it to the next round. I hope that the Swiss make it to the next round (but I think it's unlikely).

[Aberlour10]

P_Marlowe, on Jun 9 2008, 08:10 AM, said:

And I would say Greece is as good as Spain, they may not be as
good with regards to technique, but they can fight, something that
Spain and other teams are not able.

With kind regards
Marlowe

Greece won last Europeans using simple "german formula" that has been working very often in tournaments since World Cup final in 1954, where Germany beat Hungarian team of 11 excellent technicans. Even if 5-6 teams have by far better single players you win through:

- strong tactical discipline
- mental strongness
- physical condition raises from match to match

So simple is that. Not attractive, but successfull.

Robert

[gwnn]

P_Marlowe, on Jun 9 2008, 02:24 PM, said:

han, on Jun 9 2008, 06:11 AM, said:

Somewhat surprising to me that Spain received 0 votes.

Similar surprising is, that the defending champion did
not get any single vote at all.

With kind regards
Marlowe

because they have a crap team?