EURO2020: Can team kits point out to a competition winner?
The colour to success?
Prediction is a risky business but very tempting nevertheless. While there are many predictions for EURO2020 based on various models, in this post, I look at the kit colours and see if they can point towards a winner.
Winners and runners-up to date
To address this topic, the first step is to visualize the kits worn by finalists. I’ve created a simplified graphic showing the kit (shirt, shorts and socks) worn by winners and runners-up of each European Championship to date. Winners are shown on left and runners up on the right. For most part, teams have worn their usual strips in the final. In case they wore an away strip, this is marked by an oblique sign. For clarity, I’ve split the teams into 20 year swimlanes.
Interesting points
The above is a simplified graphic. The aim is not a faithful representation of team kits but to provide an idea of the colour of each kit item. The information is based on an UEFA EURO2020 article on kits, but my analysis takes it one step forward and tries to and visualize the winner’s kit. From the graphic above, some salient points emerge. I’ve split them into key categories, which I consider below.
Ends of decades (Years ending in 0)
While it’s happening in 2021, the competition is still EURO2020. It’s a year ending in 0. For these years:
- 2/3rd of winning teams had white socks
- 2/3rd had a tricolour based flag. USSR of course in 1960 had a Soviet flag but if we substitute USSR for Russia today, then it’s 3/3 tricolours.
The last 5 editions
Another angle of analysis can be the last 5 editions, which constitute every European Championship played since the turn of the century. For these:
- 3/5 teams wore red shirts
- 3/5 teams wore blue shorts
All-time
If we look at all editions, as per the graphic above and the UEFA article, the following patterns emerge.
- Winners most commonly wore red shirts, white shorts and white socks
- Runners-up most commonly wore red or white shirts (tied), white shorts and white socks
- No identical kit combination (shirt, shorts, socks) has ever featured twice in succession (for a winner or runners up)
Wildcards
To date, the Netherlands have been the only winner to wear a colour other than red, blue or white enroute to victory. Their delightful orange strip is widely regarded as the best ever for an international side. Orange entered the winners circle in the 8th edition of the European Championships. EURO2020 is the eighth one since. Can orange make a comeback? There is a chance. The two other “new” colors in contention are yellow and black.
Verdict
Based on this information, we can arrive at three tentative projections:
- White socks seem to have a high probability of appearing in the winners kit in EURO2020
- For shorts, there is no conclusive evidence. The last final at Wembley saw a team with black shorts claim victory. That is one pointer. The other is the most frequent shorts colour for winner and runners-up alike — white. So we have two colours in the mix — white and black.
- That takes us to shirts. While nothing stands out, the last final at Wembley saw a team with white shirt claim victory. Red shirted teams, when not defending their title, have most frequently conceded it to white shirted teams. Red of course is the most frequent shirt colour for winners. So here also we have two colours — white and red.
This gives us the following colour combinations:
- White shirt, white shorts, white socks
- White shirt, black shorts, white socks
- Red shirt, white shorts, white socks (Croatia is the only closest match)
- Red shirt, black shorts, white socks (no team wears this)
Now when we apply the tricolour criteria, that only leads to two options:
- White shirt, white shorts, white socks
- White shirt, black shorts, white socks
Overall, in all balance of probability, the winning team will line up in all-white kit. If we include the tricolour criteria, France, Italy, Germany have all-white kits (home or away). If we go beyond the tricolour criteria, England and Portugal also have all-white kit, or in Portugal’s case, maybe a nearly all-white away kit.
Interestingly, there is only one team which has white shirt, black shorts and white socks combination and that is a highly favoured contender — Belgium!
So there we are. Of course, this conclusion must to be taken with a HUGE GRAIN of SALT 🧂😉
It’s only an indication based on casual (yes casual not causal) correlations. How much of it will hold? We’ll find out in July. Till then, we can use it for a good laugh and carefree speculation.
