Searching for the Next UEFA Euro Football Champion

Nearly two months ago I published an article What it takes to build hockey champions. The article focused on data analysis of the IIHF World Championship 2024, held in the Czech Republic. Now another great sporting event has started. Yes, you guessed it right, I’m talking about EURO 2024, a European football championship held in Germany.

I immediately wondered how well the conclusions drawn from hockey data apply to football. Let’s find out in this article.

All the analytics were done using GoodData. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can try GoodData’s free trial.

History of Football

Football, known as soccer in North America, traces its origins back to ancient civilizations, with early forms played in China, Greece, and Rome.

On the left, an episkyros player on an ancient stone carving, c. 375–400 BCE, exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens; on the right, children playing cuju in Song dynasty China, 12th century; both images are from Wikipedia

However, the modern game began to take shape in England during the 19th century, evolving from a mix of rugby and local ball games. The first standardized rules were codified by the newly formed Football Association in 1863, distinguishing football from rugby. The sport quickly spread across Europe and South America, fueled by British influence and industrialization, leading to the establishment of the first international competition in 1872. Football’s global appeal soared throughout the 20th century, culminating in the creation of FIFA and the inaugural World Cup in 1930, solidifying its status as the world’s most popular sport.

Football Federation — FIFA

FIFA stands for “Fédération Internationale de Football Association,” French for the International Federation of Association Football. Founded in 1904, FIFA is the global governing body for football. It oversees international competitions, including the World Cup, setting the game’s rules and promoting the sport worldwide. FIFA’s headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland.

As of 2024, FIFA has 211 member associations divided into six confederations:

• AFC (Asian Football Confederation)
• CAF (Confederation of African Football)
• CONCACAF (The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association)
• CONMEBOL (Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol)
• OFC (Oceania Football Confederation)
• UEFA (Union of European Football Associations)

Image from Wikipedia by By EOZyo, Public Domain

You might ask if there are countries that are not part of FIFA. Yes, there are eight such sovereign countries.

1. Monaco (currently part of the French Football Federation)
2. Vatican City (actually has a national team and might eventually join FIFA)
3. Kiribati (not a member of FIFA but is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation)
4. Micronesia
5. Nauru (applied for membership in both the OFC and FIFA but was denied, presumably because of a lack of infrastructure and league system)
6. Palau
7. Tuvalu (associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation but not a member of FIFA as of now)
8. Marshall Islands (working on becoming a member of the Oceania Football Confederation and FIFA)

FIFA vs UEFA

OK, enough about FIFA. This article is dedicated to EURO, hosted by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations). Let’s check how these teams are doing on a global level.

As of 2024 eight out of the top ten FIFA teams come from UEFA. The list of FIFA’s top 10 is below, and UEFA members are in bold.

1. Argentina
2. France
3. Belgium
4. Brazil
5. England
6. Portugal
7. Netherlands
8. Spain
9. Croatia
10. Italy

The EURO championship has been played every four years since 1960. There was one exception in 2020, which was played in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That makes 16 championships in total.

UEFA currently has 55 members. Of these, 14 made it to the final match, and only 11 won the EURO. On the other hand, out of 16 championships, 11 distinct teams won.

That’s quite a huge variability of the winning teams. If we look closer, we can spot that six teams won only once. The most successful teams are Germany and Spain, which won 3 times.

The table is taken from Wikipedia. The third-place playoff has been removed since 1984, meaning there has been no bronze medal.

What makes a champion

Let’s uncover the secret ingredients for a successful national football. The data focuses on various aspects such as climate, demographics, economics, and FIFA ranking.

Before we dive into the analysis, let’s validate an initial assumption I will build upon:

Is it true that football finalists have the most FIFA points?

The chart below shows that EURO finalists (in pink) are at the top when discussing their points.

It seems that the field of finalists goes almost up to the middle of the chart. Let’s take a closer look at these countries. Starting from finalists with the least amount of points:

1. Greece won one gold medal in EURO 2004. They kept quite good records even after the EURO but never managed to win any additional medals.
2. Slovakia has one gold medal from 1976. This medal was won by Czechoslovakia, which eventually broke apart into Czechia and Slovakia.
3. Czechia has one gold and one silver medal. The latest is from 1996.
4. Russia has 4 finals in total, all of them from the era of the Soviet Union.
5. Serbia had 2 finals, but Yugoslavia claimed both of them.

As you can see, these teams’ medals are multiple decades old. Only Greece managed to win a medal this millennium.

The assumption is so apparent from the data that I will skip the formal proof. With the assumption confirmed, let’s start the analysis.

Climate indicators

To assess the impact of climate zones on the national team’s success, I first classified all the countries into climate zones. Please take this with a grain of salt, as some countries are at the edge of multiple climate zones or cover multiple climate zones. And, of course, the climate zone itself does not completely represent the country’s climate.

The chart below shows that the most successful national football teams come from temperate (light green) climates.

With exceptions in Sweden and Russia, the 20 best teams from Europe come from the temperate climate.

Economic indicators

There is no strong correlation between a country’s GDP and team success. The data are scattered around the chart instead of stretching in one line.

The two pink outliers on the left are Russia and Serbia. The most visible outlier on the bottom right is Liechtenstein, followed by Luxembourg and Ireland.

It is worth mentioning that football teams from countries with the highest GDP per capita are not the most successful. On the other hand, football as a sport does not require too much investment, which should not limit it to rich countries.

The two outlier finalists on the left are Russia and Serbia. As already mentioned, their medals are from the times when the countries were part of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

All the other finalists have a GDP per capita of 40 thousand USD and higher.

Demographic indicators

The impact of the country’s population is probably a bit higher than GDP, but still far from shaping any correlation.

A few observations to consider:

1. Even countries with a population of around 5 million could get to the finals. These countries, however, achieved their medals long ago (Denmark), and some of them as different countries (Slovakia, Serbia)
2. Then, there is a triangle of three mid-sized countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal) with a population between 10 and 18 million. These countries have already reached the finals and are currently among the top 10 FIFA-rated teams.
3. All countries with a population of 40 million and above won a medal. The only exception is Turkey.

The most visible pink outlier on the right is Russia with population of almost 150 millions

Professional players

The number of professional players in individual countries is somewhat different. In general, the more professional players, the more successful the national football team is. The same can be said about the amount of professional clubs in the country.

The two countries with the most clubs and professional players are England and Turkey

If we omit the already mentioned outliers (Slovakia, Denmark, Serbia), we get to a minimal number of around 800 (798, to be more precise) of professional players to get to finals. This number of professional players belongs to Belgium.

Very similar is the situation with clubs, after omitting Slovakia with 12 professional clubs, the first finalist is again Belgium with 24 clubs.

Honestly, Belgium might not be the best representative because almost half of its professional players (45 %) play outside of the Belgium league.

Here is another view on the same data.

Any future champions out there?

Ok, data analysis is a nice thing, but is there any conclusion to it? To be honest, I haven’t found strong correlations in the data. This, in my opinion, indicates how internationalized the sport is. In the lines below, I will try to summarize a few aspects of a successful national team, but there are simply too many external aspects. For example, we can talk about the number of professional players or clubs the country should have to raise a quality national team, but what if the country’s neighbor has a strong international football league such as the Premier League in England, La Liga in Spain, League 1 in France, or Serie A in Italy? And does it even need to be a neighbor in the current world of short distances?

Below is a list of criteria for a new champion based on the assessment of the current ones. All of these criteria were already discussed in this article. To be safe, I also included countries at the edge of the criteria, as the indicators can slightly evolve in the next few years.

• GDP per capita should be above 40 thousand USD.
• The population should be above 9 million. The hard data lean towards 10 million, but there are 2 countries that quite well match the other criteria and have 9 million people. Let’s include them.
• The climate should be temperate to boreal. I was tempted to include an arid climate zone but eventually decided not to. Instead, I gave the one team with an arid climate but otherwise passing all the criteria a special mention.

The professional national leagues should have at least 750 professional players and 20 clubs.

Conclusion

I leveraged all the knowledge from this article and tried to find the next EURO champions — not necessarily in 2024, but eventually. Out of the current members of UEFA, only four teams match all the criteria mentioned above and have not won any EURO so far.

I tried to predict these teams’ future EURO results based on their historical results. But honestly, their record history is rather sparse, and most of the time, they simply did not qualify for the championship.

The only team whose projections show a noticeable improvement is Austria.

There has been one team that caught my attention even though it did not make it to the final list:

The only reason Turkey did not make the list was its climate. If it won the championship, it would be the first country with an arid climate. Otherwise, Turkey has everything it needs to become a champion.

I hope you enjoyed my analysis. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.