Which EURO 2020 teams will have home advantage and will it matter?
This summers UEFA European Championship is a unique affair as, rather than there being one or two host nations, the fixtures are being contested all across the continent. A total of 11 cities will stage tournament matches, with nine of the host countries involved in EURO 2020  the exceptions being Azerbaijan (Baku) and Romania (Bucharest). That means that a minimum of 24 of the 51 fixtures in this summers event will see a team enjoying home advantage, and that figure will potentially rise in the knockout rounds. These are the teams that will enjoy home advantage, the number of matches they will contest on their own turf and the possible number of home games they may be handed in the knockout rounds. Country Home group games (maximum of 3) Possible number of home knockout games (maximum 4) Italy 3 1 Denmark 3 0 Russia 2 1 Netherlands 3 0 England 3 3 Scotland 2 1 Spain 3 1 Germany 3 1 Hungary 2 1  Should they win their group and progress to the final, England will play six of their seven EURO 2020 games on home soil. Thats because the semi-finals and final of the tournament will be staged at Wembley, with two round-of-16 ties also taking place in north-west London. Fifteen of the 24 competing nations wont be hosting a match, with Finland, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Portugal and France the six countries who will face two away fixtures. Of course, these matches will not be home games in every respect, as the crowds will be made up of sections of support from both competing nations as well as the proverbial neutrals and corporates. And most of these stadiums will not be at full capacity, either, thanks to restrictions in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. Home nations have generally performed well on home soil in past European Championships, with a host nation making at least the last four from 1960-2004. The rather limited squads of Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Ukraine failed to progress from the group stage in 2008 and 2012, however. 1960: France (fourth)  1964: Spain (winners)  1968: Italy (winners)  1972: Belgium (third)  1976: Yugoslavia (fourth)  1980: Italy (fourth)  1984: France (winners)  1988: West Germany (semi-finals)  1992: Sweden (semi-finals)  1996: England (semi-finals)  2000: Belgium (group stage), Netherlands (semi-finals)  2004: Portugal (runners-up)  2008: Austria (group stage), Switzerland (group stage)  2012: Poland (group stage), Ukraine (group stage)  2016: France (runners-up)  This excellent article from Sporting Life is highly recommended, as it details the (slightly diminishing) importance of home advantage in championships and qualifiers past. To quote this piece:  Over the entire history of the European Championships, where there has been a home side, they have scored an average of 1.7 goals per match and their visitors have scored 1.1 goals per match. Nearly half of all Euro games have been won by the home team and only 31% have fallen to the visitors. However, home advantage isnt unchanging and has been in constant decline in post-war international and domestic football. Improved travel arrangements have helped drive this narrowing of the performance differential on the road compared to at home. Group A: Turkey | Italy | Wales | Switzerland  Group B: Denmark | Finland | Belgium | Russia  Group C: Netherlands | Ukraine | Austria | North Macedonia  Group D: England | Croatia | Scotland | Czech Republic  Group E: Spain | Sweden | Poland | Slovakia  Group F: Hungary | Portugal | France | Germany  STRATEGY  Become a Member and get unrestricted access to our data and articles  Full-year memberships are now available for the price of 25.00. Monthly subscriptions also cost just 3.99. A FREE trial is now available. Join now to get the following:  Plot your transfer strategies using the fully interactive Season Ticker. Get projections for every Premier League player provided by the Rate My Team statistical model. Use Rate My Team throughout the season to guide your selections and transfers. Get access to over 150+ exclusive members articles over the season. Analyse our OPTA-powered statistic tables specifically tailored for Fantasy Football Managers. Use our exclusive tool to build custom stats tables from over 100 OPTA player and team stats. Enjoy our brand NEW Flat-Track Bully feature which introduces an opposition filter to your tables. View heatmaps and expected goals data for every player. Use our powerful comparison tool to analyse players head-to-head. CLICK HERE TO START A MEMBERSHIP ACCOUNT