It’s heart vs head time with the start of the European Football Championships.
Actually there’s no point of an England fan backing England to win the Euros.
It’s very rare you will hear a bookmaker saying that, but as an England fan let’s be fair and honest and admit that if England do win it we will so be delighted and shocked it would not matter whether or not we’d had £10 on at 9-1.
The whole country would probably be on a national holiday and it will make the celebrations from when England beat Australia in the ashes in 2005 pale into insignificance. There would be mass celebrations if England brought the trophy home.
My personal selection is France. I am sticking with the favourites.
Six of the last nine Euro tournaments have been won by either France, Germany or Spain and those three are the first three in the market at 3-1, 4-1 and 5-1. So no surprise they are the favourites.
There are a couple of things going for France.
Firstly they have a great record when hosting tournaments in their own country.
In 1984 they won the Euros as hosts and in 1998 they won the Word Cup when staging the tournament.
Secondly they have a mid-field to die for.
I still fancy my chances of scoring a few goals if I was playing up front and had Pogba, Griezmann, Matuidi, Kante, Martial and Payet all providing chances for me.
Defensively they do look weak but as we’ve seen this year with teams like Leicester City it’s the engine room of mid-field, the legs, athleticism and creativity that can take you on to win things.
It’s not very creative backing France at 3-1 but I have backed Giroud at 16s to be top scorer because, as I’ve said earlier, he must just get chances and it doesn’t feel like he actually played that much in the Premier League this season, so he finished fresh.
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If you want a big outsider, perhaps Austria.
I’m very negative about Portugal, who are favourites in Group F. If Nani is their best attacking talent outside of Ronaldo they have problems.
Austria are 2-1 to win the group and if they did finish top they would end up in the top half of the draw which is significantly weaker than what I would except the bottom half to end up.
They won nine out of 10 qualifiers, which pretty much went unnoticed, and they are a very physical, determined side who know exactly what their strength and weaknesses are.
