The 2020 European Championship has come to an end with Italy beating England in the final to win the trophy and thus it’s time to put together the tournament’s best starting line-up based on numbers provided following the use of artificial intelligence.
Olocip have used their valuation model in order to pick the players who made the most impact on their teams’ play. This value is calculated by taking into account each action of the game in terms of the change in the probability of whether the team in possession of the ball scores on that play or concedes a goal and the moment of the game in which they occur.
Thus, Denmark are the team who generated the most value in the Euros (23.69) followed by Italy (22.20), with Spain (19.84) coming fourth.
It should be noted that what is important is not the number of actions a player produces, but the value generated by those actions.
Likewise, it is essential to take into account the context of the match in which these actions take place – period and minute of the match, match result and home team – as a last-minute winner can’t have the same value as a goal a player nets when his team are already winning 4-0.
Hence, according to the AI, the Best XI from Euro 2020 consists of Jordan Pickford (England) in goal, Harry Maguire (England), Aymeric Laporte (Spain) and Mykola Matviyenko (Ukraine) as centre-backs, Joakim Maehle (Denmark) as left wing-back with Xherdan Shaqiri (Switzerland) on the right.
Georginio Wijnaldum (Netherlands) and Pedri (Spain) are in midfield, with Emil Forsberg (Sweden) and Raheem Sterling (England) on the flanks and Patrik Schick (Czech Republic) in attack.
Curiously, despite coming second in terms of the highest value generated in the tournament, Italy do not have any players in the best XI. This means that the Azzurri were a team in which practically all the players played an important role, with more than 11 players registering more than 1.16 in value.
Meanwhile, Olocip created the second-best XI, one which consists of Kasper Schmeichel (Denmark) in goal; Jordi Alba (Spain), Leonardo Bonucci (Italy) and Manuel Akanji (Switzerland) in defence, Thomas Delaney (Denmark) and Jorginho (Italy) in midfield; Ferran Torres (Spain) and Federico Chiesa (Italy) on the flanks; Haris Seferovic (Switzerland), Robert Lewandowski (Poland) and Romelu Lukaku (Belgium) in attack.
Therefore, according to the AI, Schick is the Euro 2020 MVP with a generated value of 4.34, while Pedri is the best young player in the tournament with a value of 2.45.
