Poland

Early chances for Austria, stopped well by Boruc in the Polish goal. Repeatedly. According to his club manager, Celtic’s Gordon Strachan, he has ‘a presence’ when he walks in the dressing room, and you apparently know the goal is safe. Same can definitely be said for his performance in the first 15 minutes in Vienna tonight. Boruc didn’t feature in the CPI’s list before tonight, but you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be high on the keepers list come the morning.

Beenhakker, looking like a faded lounge singer on the back slide of his career, crooning in a smoky bar, urges his defence - well - just to be better, really.

The unlucky Austrian defence mirrors the unfortunate Swiss back line by knocking one into the path of an opponent for a tap in. Looking at the heat maps Austrian defence and the Polish attack, one would be forgiven for thinking that they are doing quite a good job. But with Poland piling everything (literally) down the right, the Austrian back four are looking fairly central. And where did the goal come from? The right wing.

Stats, as ever, powered by the Castrol Index

In their match against Germany, the Castrol Performance Index stats highlight one player as the reason behind Poland’s downfall. Defender Michal Zewlakow played way too high up the pitch, leaving space in behind him for Klose and Podolski to exploit to bag the goals. Leaving his fellow defenders and keeper hideously exposed in such a way might cause coach Beenhakker to have stern words. And the Zewlakow can’t mitigate his absence from the back four by saying he ran forward to win the ball, as he was successful in only 50% of his challenges.

Austria have the legs to exploit the gaps in Poland’s defence too. Standfest and Aufhauser both covered over 11km in their match against Croatia, proving that the co-hosts aren’t just there to make up the numbers. And with home crowd advantage, maybe we’ll see an upset as Austria power through the weak Polish lines.

Tricky one to predict, but Jack reckons this might finish 1-0 Poland, although it doesn’t matter as they’re both bound to go out in the group stages.

Tom says a sneaky 1-0 Austrian victory.

Stats provided by http://www.castrolindex.com

Unsurprisingly, unless you’re Alan Shearer, Euro 2008 favourites Germany cruised to a fairly easy victory against plucky Poland – with Lukas Podolski cracking home a super brace against his home nation.

Polish-born Podolski put Germany on the path to victory when he slid home Miroslav Klose’s pass from close range after 20 minutes, and what a strike it was for the second – belting the ball past the helpless Artur Boruc.

How impressive was Ballack, once against the most industrious player on the pitch covering 11,552km all told – whilst Klose reached a top speed of 30.86 km/h… A quite incredible effort from him, that could see him coming to London 2012 as a sprinter yet

Poland tried hard though, and covered 108,426km – more than Germany’s 108255m – but they lacked the initiative – and look likely to be heading out of the tournament, even at this early stage.

See you tomorrow for group C day – I’m VERY excited!! Stats, as ever, provided by Castrol - thanks Castrol!

It’s two nil – Germany have got this one in the bag, and it’s ‘close the game up’ time to see the tournament favourites sitting pretty at the top of Group B.

Interestingly though, we’ve been looking at the heatmaps – and noticed that they are virtually identical for both teams, although Poland have been more forceful in pushing up flanks – while Germany have enjoyed dominance in the centre of the midfield.

Ballack again? Well as we showed earlier, he likes to spread himself across the whole pitch, and a lot is down to the hardworking Frings (who has covered 8,454 km in the first 75 minutes) – and the two forwards who have made it their mission to support the midfielders, as well as banging in the goals.

Observe…

Here’s an interesting stat plucked from half-time… It’s been widely publicised over on the blog that Michael Ballack is running the rule over the rest of the midfielders, but you might be surprised to learn that Dariusz Dudka, Polish defender, is matching him almost to the metre.

Whilst Ballack has put in an impressive 5,865m, Dudka has chimed in with only 65m less overall. Impressive stuff, although as one can tell from these heat maps (below) – they both operate very differing styles.

Whilst the Pole remains focussed on very specific zonal marking, remaining within fairly narrow confines of the centre of the pitch, Ballack is happier roaming across the whole field, covering (as they say) every blade of grass on the pitch.. Keep an eye on how they progress over at the CPI match-tracker.

9 days… That’s it! Just over a week until the showcase for international European football kicks off, and there’s clearly no better way to prepare yourself than with a free, downloadable wall chart that can be printed off, slapped on the wall – and diligently filled in until the final on the 29^th.

Who will win? Well my cheeky prediction is for a Netherlands vs. Germany final, with The Oranje coming out surprising winners – but to make up your own mind using the stats, check out castrolindex.com.

Meanwhile, come get your fill – you’re more than welcome to download our free Euro 2008 wallchart here, or by clicking on the picture below. Easily printable on A4 paper (so you can run off a load at work and no one will notice), it is complete with all the info you’ll need (date, times, venues etc) – as well as statistically the very best XI in qualifying.

Download it here… (or right click on the picture and select ’save link as’)

euro2008wallchart_uk.pdf

So Euro 2008 is just days away now (it really is!), and with everyone looking to get their pre-tournament favourites decided so they can support a winning team for once, bash the bookies and enjoy what promises to be a feast of football – those boffins at Castrol have come up with some rather interesting statistics showing the percentage likelihood of each national team, progressing to the quarter finals, semi finals, finals – and eventual winners of course!

Now we’re all pretty sure that Germany are the favourites for the tournament – after all, the punters got thoroughly behind their formidable squad (as low as 3/1 with some bookmakers), but some of Castrol’s other insights may surprise you. Blinded no doubt by Cristiano Ronaldo’s spectacular double winning season for Manchester United – Portugal are widely touted as 3^rd favourites – a confidence not backed up by the statistics, which see misfiring Portugal (who, let’s remember, finished behind Poland in their qualifying group) are given just 5% chance of snatching the tournament (the same percentage as Croatia and widely unfancied Switzerland).

Meanwhile, Romania their (quite frankly incredible) opening odds of 50/1 with some bookies, with statistics suggesting that they have more chance of tasting world-stage glory for the first time than world-champions Italy! No doubt scared off by their devastatingly tough group, The Tricolorii faithful should take solace in these statistics.

And whether or not you agree, there’s no doubt that time after time, the statistics have offered a look behind the misconceptions and vitriol of those who believe they know everything about football.

UEFA EURO 2008

Team - Progress to Quarter Final - Progress to Semi Final - Progress to Final - Win

Germany - 83% - 51% - 32% - 17%
Spain - 79% - 42% - 24% - 14%
Netherlands - 55% - 33% - 18% - 10%
Czech Republic - 63% - 36% - 20% - 10%
France - 54% - 32% - 17% - 10%
Romania - 49% - 27% - 14% - 7%
Italy - 42% - 23% - 12% - 6%
Switzerland - 51% - 25% - 12% - 5%
Portugal - 51% - 25% - 11% - 5%
Croatia - 55% - 26% - 11% - 5%
Sweden - 45% - 17% - 7% - 3%
Greece - 43% - 15% - 6% - 2%
Turkey - 34% - 14% - 6% - 2%
Poland - 37% - 14% - 5% - 2%
Russia - 33% - 10% - 3% - 1%
Austria - 26% - 9% - 3% - 1%

Of course, the biggest surprise of this table is that Austria have a 1% chance of lifting the trophy – I’d happily stake my kidneys against that eventuality – but this could make for some interesting food for thought, and we’ll see how well the percentages stack up in a little under two months time.