⚽️ Spain stand apart from their rivals — but are still a long way from triumphing at Euro 2025
My Week in Sport(s) ⚽️ 🏏 🏀 🎾 🏉
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: ⚽️ Spain, 🏏 England, 🏀 Jonquel Jones, 🎾 Jannik Sinner and 🏉 Leinster.
⚽️ Spain stand apart from their rivals — but are still a long way from triumphing at Euro 2025
At every international football tournament, one team begins as the nominal ‘favourite’ — but how relevant is that tag? As we’ve discussed before knockout competitions in the past, it’s a safe bet to pick the field over any favoured team — by a big margin.
Analytically, though, it’s a useful grounding exercise. Are Spain really the best team at Euro 2025? Going by their results against other competing nations since the last tournament, the answer is a clear ‘yes’. Advanced data isn’t available for most women’s internationals, but scorelines will suffice. Over this period they have won 82% of their 28 matches, with an average goal difference of +2.0 per game; no other team has a win rate better than 67% — or an average margin better than +1.4 goals.
I have an instinctive dislike of the term ‘flat-track bully’, but let’s entertain the notion that Spain’s record might be inflated by beating up on Europe’s weaker teams. What happens if we split their performances in two — looking at how they fared against the seven other strongest teams at the Euros, as well as the eight weakest? Slice things this way, and you get to the same conclusion: Spain have the best win rate (69%) in matches between the ‘top eight’, as well as the best average goal difference (+0.9).
How have they trended over time, though? For the UEFA Nations League, we do have more than just goals and wins to go on. Their underlying performances in the group stage of this edition have actually looked better than during the last edition in 2023, which came just after their World Cup win. Then, they recorded a 76% share of the shots inside the box in their six games — and 72% of the ‘big chances’. This time — with Euro 2022 champions England in their group — those figures were 85% and 78%.
Having people pick holes in your game is the cost of doing business at the top of elite sport. While I don’t think they’ll coast to the Euro 2025 title when the tournament kicks off next week, I’m pretty comfortable saying that Spain are the continent’s strongest team. It’s unlikely they’ll be properly challenged before the semi-final stage — but unlikely things happen all the time. That’s never truer than at an international football tournament, and It’s only a few days until the chaos begins again.
🏏 Men’s test cricket in England is no longer following the game’s traditional script
So far this English summer, two men’s test matches have been played between four of the world’s strongest teams. They’ve both ended in similar fashion: with a comfortable final-innings chase that would have been pretty remarkable by historical standards.
By the standards of test cricket in England in the last few years, however, they weren’t as unusual. Reversing a fairly consistent trend, scoring in the fourth innings of test matches hosted in the country has become much easier: since 2022, teams have recorded more runs per dismissal batting last than in any other phase of the game. England themselves have excelled, scoring 59.7 runs per fourth-innings dismissal over this period — but other teams have also improved on the recent past, too.
As Tim Wigmore noted for The Telegraph, during Brendon McCullum’s tenure the team has successfully chased a target of 250 or more six times in seven attempts at home. In five attempts overseas, however, they’re yet to succeed. Have English pitches specifically changed in ways that favour the batting side later in games, then? CricViz — with their vast private repository of ball-tracking data — are best placed to answer this question. I know which topic I’d like their newsletter to cover next.
What else I learned last week
🏀 In her absence, Jonquel Jones looks like the Liberty’s key player
Who is the New York Liberty’s most important player? After starting the season with nine straight wins, they’ve since dropped three games in five. In those recent losses, former league MVP Jonquel Jones played only nine minutes out of a possible 120.
Jones has the best ‘on-off’ rating of the team’s three stars: since 2023, New York have been around 12 points per 100 possessions better when she’s on the court than when she isn’t. But on-off data is notoriously difficult to parse; over the last three seasons, she has played only 7% of her minutes without Sabrina Ionescu or Breanna Stewart alongside her. A long absence isn’t good news for Jones or her team — but we might get more insight into how the Liberty’s stars fit together as a consequence.
🎾 Jannik Sinner wasn’t as tidy as usual against Alcaraz at Roland Garros
Carlos Alcaraz will enter the main draw at Wimbledon next week on the back of another tournament win at Queen’s. Jannik Sinner, meanwhile, kicked off his grass-court season in Halle — but lost in the quarter-finals of that ATP 500 event.
When I wrote about Sinner’s winner and unforced-error rates a couple of weeks ago, data from Roland-Garros wasn’t yet available. Those figures are now in; how do they compare? The Italian’s winner rates fell within his normal range — from around 13% of points played to just under 20% — while his error rates were unusually low in his quarter- and semi-final matches. That UFE%, however, shot up to 18% in the final against Alcaraz — one of his worst career marks in the latter stages of a grand slam.
🏉 Leinster’s attack rebounded as they finished the season on a high
When I last checked in with Leinster, their attack had hit a relative low point. At the end of March, over their last 30 fixtures they had averaged 27.2 points scored per game — around nine points below their peak under former coach Stuart Lancaster.
The last time the province’s attack was at a similar level was during their 2016-17 campaign, when the Englishman came on board as ‘senior coach’. This season, a loss to Northampton Saints in the Champions Cup semi-finals meant that they claimed the silverware in only one of the two tournaments they compete in; it’s hard to blame their attack for that, though. Across April, May and June, Leinster played 10 games across domestic and continental competition — and scored 40.2 points per game on average.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published on Friday July 4th.
