European Championship – Group C Predictions

01/06/21 3002

Group C at the 2020 European Championship is the first group where we could see a genuine tussle between three teams to progress to the knockout stages. The group contains Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria, and North Macedonia.

Netherlands will begin as the favourites with the bookies to win the group and they qualified for the European Championship by finishing second behind Germany.

They were only two points adrift off the Germans in the final standings and were undefeated in 7 of their 8 qualifying matches. However, the Dutch have already suffered a defeat in their 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign and will be missing key central defender, Virgil van Dijk.

It is worth remembering Netherlands will play all 3 of their group fixtures in Amsterdam, with at least 12,000 fans in attendance. In each of the previous 7 European Championships they have contested, Netherlands have qualified for the knockout stages.

Ukraine enjoyed a tremendous European Championship qualifying campaign and finished top of their group above defending champions Portugal. Ukraine remained undefeated throughout qualifying despite having to play tough fixtures away against the Portuguese and Serbia.

Ukraine defeated Portugal at home and took a point off them in a 0-0 draw away, showing they are capable of mixing it with the biggest nations.

Having picked up a point in their opening 2022 World Cup qualifying match away against France, Ukraine have since slipped up with draws at home against Finland and Kazakhstan. That is not a good sigh ahead of this tournament and they will need to improve on those performances if they are going to finish top of the group.

Austria finished second in the European Championship qualifying group behind Poland. They managed to score one more goal than the Polish team but suffered 3 defeats in their 10 fixtures, one of which was against Poland, one in Israel, and one in Latvia.

Austria are currently 4th in their 2022 World Cup qualifying group having been defeated heavily at home by Denmark and held to a draw in Scotland. This is only the third time Austria have qualified for the European Championship and they have yet to progress beyond the group stage.

With Ukraine and North Macedonia in the group, this presents a good opportunity for Austria to pick up the points required to progress to the knockout stages for the first time in their history.

North Macedonia have been given little chance of finishing in the top three of this group. However, a recent away victory in Germany in 2022 World Cup qualifying has made other nations take note.

This is the first major international football tournament in the history of North Macedonia and they qualified via the Nations League as the Play-off Path D winner.

Only Hungary have greater odds than North Macedonia to qualify for the knockout stages of the competition and that is because North Macedonia’s odds have dropped since their win in Germany.

The question is, was that a one-off or can North Macedonia produce similar results in this group? Previous results suggest it was the former.

Prediction:

1.Netherlands
2.Ukraine
3.Austria
4.North Macedonia