Goldman Sachs bets England will beat Italy this weekend, but…

By Paul R. La Monica, CNN Business

Here’s some good news for long-suffering fans of England’s football (aka soccer) team. Goldman Sachs predicts that England has a 58% chance of defeating Italy in Sunday’s Euro 2020 final.

That would be England’s first victory in a major tournament in 55 years — and it would come in front of a boisterous home crowd at Wembley Stadium in London. It won’t be easy though. Goldman’s model is forecasting a 2-1 win for England’s so-called Three Lions…in extra time.

Now for the bad news. Goldman Sachs has been wrong so far with many of its soccer prognostications — particularly when it comes to Gli Azzurri, or the Blues, as Italy is known to its fans.

Goldman’s Christian Schnittker and the rest of the European economics team originally forecast that Belgium would win the tournament. Italy defeated Belgium in the quarterfinals. Goldman also incorrectly picked Spain to defeat Italy in the semifinals.

So maybe Italy’s fans should be happy that the Vampire Squid of Wall Street is still doubting them. Being an underdog has gotten them all the way to the final. And perhaps Goldman Sachs should stick to forecasting GDP growth and making stock picks.

Goldman also wasn’t expecting England to be playing Sunday. Schnittker and his team wrote before the tournament began that they thought Portugal would be in the championship match.

Still, Goldman did correctly point out that England had a big advantage if it were to advance this far.

“England has a possible in-built edge here, hosting both semi-finals and the final at Wembley,” the analysts noted back in late May before the tournament began.

The-CNN-Wire
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