One Hot Minute: England U19s vs Germany U19s

To get a handle on when the first goal might be scored in the England U19s vs Germany U19s group game at the European Under-19 Championship for our bwin predictor game, we have analysed every match in the group stage since the tournament evolved from the under-18 version back in 2002.

We have also broken down the recent scoring exploits of the two teams to see how quickly their attacks have been striking.

Our analysis last week showed how surprisingly common it was to see an early goal in a major international final and this was vindicated when Germany took the lead after just 20 minutes. The under 19s are even quicker to get off the mark, with over half of the opening goals in the tournament’s history – 87 out of 169 –having been netted inside the first 20 minutes of the match. In turn, over half of these were converted inside the first 10 minutes, so an explosive start to this game would not shock us.

In fact there have been more deadlocks broken in the opening quarter of an hour of the tournament’s group games than in the remainder of the first half – 67 to 65 – and only around one in five matches saw both teams keep their powder dry until after half-time. This all points to a spread of early selections being an optimum strategy here.

In recent matches both of these teams have been somewhat more restrained, though, so if you’re planning to submit multiple entries then a few later estimates would not go amiss. The England Under 19s have waited until the 26^th minute on average to open the scoring in their last 20 fixtures, with their German counterparts leaving it even later – the 32^nd minute – to open their account.