UEFA Euro 2020, played this year

In the past, I created posts on which soccer fans among my friends and I could discuss and comment on the games played during a concurrent soccer tournament. It was great fun, and I am doing this again for the UEFA Euro 2020 competition from June 11 to July 11, which was delayed by a year due to the pandemic.

For the group phase, Germay finds herself in the mother of all "groups of death", Group F with, aside from Germany, the reigning World Champion, France, and the reigning European Champion, Portugal. Hungary will complete the quartet.

In the old days, only the first- and second-placed teams of each group advanced to the elimination rounds. This would have meant that Germany would have to finish ahead of France or Portugal in Group F to get beyond the group phase, a daunting prospect given the decidedly mixed record of the German side over the past several years. But UEFA, in its wisdom, decided in 2016 to increase the total number of participating teams from 16 to 24, which makes it necessary to start the elimination phase with a round of 16 that also includes the 4 third-placed teams with the best records. That is to say, 4 points in the group phase (1 victory and 1 draw in 3 matches) will probably be enough to advance. In fact, even 3 points may be enough, as demonstrated by Portugal during Euro 2016: They tied three times during the group phase, advanced to the elimination round as a third-placed team, and won the tournament in the end! And so, even a team with a checkered recent record like Germany's has a chance to advance beyond the group phase.

I will start the discussion in my first comment with a few additional observations about the German side.

Euro 2016

Euro 2016 has started, with 24 national teams competing for the cup. For the intial group phase, these teams have been placed into 6 groups, where each team plays 3 matches, one against each of the other members of its group. The first- and second-placed teams in each groups and the 4 best third-placed teams overall will advance to the round of 16. Here are the groups:

Group A France Switzerland Romania Albania	Group B England Russia Slovakia Wales	Group C Germany Poland Ukraine N. Ireland	Euro2016 fever in Cologne, courtesy of kidbrother
Group D Spain Croatia Czech Republic Turkey	Group E Belgium Italy Sweden Ireland	Group F Portugal Austria Hungary Iceland

The mood in Germany is guardedly optimistic. Since they won the World Cup two years ago, the Germans have hardly ever played at the level they had shown during that cup. But then again, that just fits the pattern: They typically enter a tournament with a mixed record and then improve as they advance through the rounds.

The great strength of the Mannschaft is that it works as a team, a collective in which every player can, in principle, be replaced without an apparent drop in performance of the team as a whole. At the opposite end are sides whose performance depends on and is geared to a single dominant player. Such teams can be beaten if the dominant player can be neutralized—the Germans demonstrated this during the 2014 World Cup when they beat Portugal (with Ronaldo) in the group round and Argentina (with Messi) in the final. More about this in my first comment.