Just about a week removed from the French Open, France will continue to provide some top-class sporting action this Friday when Europe’s best football clubs duke it out at the UEFA Euro 2016.
Group D of this quadrennial tournament is totally stacked, with defending champions Spain leading the pack. Will the Spaniards cruise to the knockout stage, or will the three other hungry nations give them a run for their money? Let’s find out more below.
Afterwards, complete your Euro 2016 betting coverage with our previews for the other equally intriguing groups of the tournament in the following links:
As back-to-back champions, you’d really be hard-pressed to find a better team in the Euros than Spain.
Manager Vicente del Bosque and his boys are undoubtedly the most experienced bunch in Group D. Their path leading up to this week’s tournament has even been met with little to no opposition, having won nine of their 10 qualifying matches with relative ease.
La Furia Roja will once again trot out their lynchpins that have given them so much success over the years; Andres Iniesta has 107 caps and was an integral part of Barcelona’s most recent La Liga and Copa del Rey titles, and he’ll be complemented by fellow veterans Cesc Fabregas (103 caps) and lock-down defender Sergio Ramos (132). Oh, and let’s not forget that the team has arguably the best goalkeeper in the world in David de Gea.
With such a vast amount of talent at its disposal, Spain could very well become the first club to three-peat the tournament when all is said and done.
Even though the Croatian national football team has made the final-eight of the Euros twice (1996 and 2008), they’re still far from being considered as a real threat in the tournament.
But perhaps this 2016 run will be Vatreni’s best outing yet considering their stellar form in the qualifiers. They scored the most goals from Group H with 20, and suffered just one loss – 2-0 to Norway – en route to their berth for this week’s event.
Sensational striker Ivan Perisic led Croatia and the entire Group H in the qualifiers with six goals. But while Perisic can certainly catch fire at any given moment, he alone may not be enough to overthrow the mighty Spaniards, and the team does not have a true alternative option outside of him to consistently put up points on the board.
Much like Croatia, the Czech Republic also emerged as a winner in the qualifiers, going 7-1-2 in Group A behind a total of 19 goals scored.
Obviously, the Czechs won’t be scoring as much goals against stiffer competition here at the Euros. But luckily for them, they have Golden Glove winner Petr Cech (119 games played for the national team) between the posts to stifle their opponents all day.
However, the Czechs have seen diminished returns following their surprising finals appearance in the 1996 edition of the tournament, which was what pretty much knocked them down to long-shot status rather than credible sleepers. They made it just to the semis in 2004 wherein they were manhandled by eventual champions Greece, then followed that up with a brutal 1-0 quarterfinal defeat at the hands of Portugal in 2012.
Basically on-par with the Czech Republic in the oddsmakers’ eyes, Turkey actually had a tougher time clinching its Euro berth compared to the three other teams we’ve just covered here. The Crescent Stars made it to the tournament as the best third-place team in the qualifiers by beating the likes of the Netherlands, Iceland, and even the Czechs themselves.
Star midfielder Arda Turan has 89 caps under his belt and brings his experience from Barca to the table, while Burak Yilmaz provided some firepower as the team’s leading scorer in the qualifiers with four goals. However, the Turkish would need nigh-perfect performances from the rest of their relatively lackluster roster to possibly and shockingly emerge at the very top of Group D’s standings.
Writer’s prediction
Spain prevails as Group D’s top-placer as expected, while the Czech Republic secures the second spot to automatically qualify for the knockout stage.
