Jack Wright’s EURO 2024 Predictions

The last international competition saw France denied back-to-back World Cup successes only via a penalty shoot-out defeat to Argentina in the final. Didier Deschamps is the longest serving manager at the Euros and leads his nation in his sixth successive tournament. With his experience and the quality at his disposal Les Bleus will take all the stopping. Even a second-string side would be competitive, and I am taking Deschamps to go one better than in 2016 and add a European Championship crown to the World Cup they won in 2018.

Dubbed the “Godfather” of German football Ralf Rangnick has made a superb start in his first venture into international management. Das Team have only lost once since the beginning of 2023 winning 11 of their last 14 matches at the time of writing. The Austrians were given a boost with Rangnick turning down Bayern Munich’s advances to instead lead them into Euro 2024. Recent friendly victories over Italy and Germany supplemented a qualifying campaign which saw them win six of their eight games.

Kylian Mbappé scooped the Golden Boot at the World Cup 18 months ago and I am taking him to double up at a justifiably short price. France’s skipper fired in eight goals in Qatar including a sensational hattrick in the final illustrating his ability to perform on the biggest stage. He plundered 27 goals in 29 Ligue 1 games in his last season for PSG, adding another eight in the Champions League. His nine goals in qualifying were bettered by only two players and expect him to thrive off the added motivation of his recently confirmed move to Real Madrid.

This price looks big for a player that provided four assists in qualifying with only Bruno Fernandes creating more than his 31 chances. A third of Serbia’s 15 goals in qualifying came from headers and their skipper is the man on set piece duty. Tadić provided 17 assists for Fenerbahçe in his first season since moving from Ajax where he laid on 81 goals in 161 league games. A minimum return of 13 showing the levels of consistency the 35-year-old has performed at. With Aleksandar Mitrović and Dušan Vlahović awaiting his service he could give us a run at big odds.

Bruno Fernandes is the favourite in the market having assisted the most goals in Euro 2024 qualifying with eight. The Manchester United midfielder also led the way for total chances created (37) and more impressively those created from open play (24).

Portugal are fancied to go deep into this tournament and could miss the top seeds until the semi-final if results go as expected. So, with that in mind I like the 40/1 on offer for Player of the Tournament rather than the 13/1 for most assists.

After a superb campaign for Bayer Leverkusen Florian Wirtz was named the Bundesliga’s Player of the Season for 2023/24. The 21-year-old was then acclaimed by his peers with 51% of players in the German top tier voting him best player. Putting that into context Granit Xhaka was runner-up with 7.5% of the votes. So, why not make it a hat-trick! Wirtz hit 18 goals and provided 19 assists across all competitions for Leverkusen and has already made history for the national team. Scoring their quickest goal ever with a strike after seven seconds against France in March.