EURO 2020 & Kit Colors

Do Jersey Colors have anything to do with winning?

While watching the fourth Quarterfinals of EURO 2020 between England and Ukraine, I had a sudden realization that winners of the first three quarterfinals were all playing in white. By the time I decided to tweet this ‘brilliant’ observation of mine Harry Kane had already scored for England (also wearing White).

Opening Twitter I was disappointed to note that I wasn’t the only one to make this observation, there were herds of tweets saying England will win because they are playing in white.

Looking at all these tweets, I started thinking if there is some correlation between Jersey Color and winning. Right after the Ukraine England match, it was 2:30 AM in India and I started collecting data on match results and the kits those teams were wearing. The data was collected looking at post-match images posted by EURO on Instagram. (Alongside, I also collected data on the official kit of the participating teams)

There have been 48 matches so far, 40 had a decisive end, and 8 ended up being drawn.

Visualizing the Kits

Looking at these it's quite evident that number of White and Red kits is much higher than other colors. They constitute 62.55% (30/48) of the total kits, it seems pretty obvious that they will be involved more in wins and losses.

Visualizing the Wins and Losses

A higher number of Red and White kits is clearly reflected in victories and defeats of the teams but there is a sharp divide. White dominates in winning and Red dominates (lol) in losings.

Looking at this level one of analysis I might not be wrong to state the following:

If you are wearing white, you are more likely to win;
if you are wearing red, you are more likely to lose.

It sounds like a great observation, but it wasn’t making much sense to my mind.

Visualizing the Teams and their Rankings

Digging in deeper, I decided to divide the teams playing Euro 2020 into three groups based on their FIFA rankings. Which looked like this:

Further, I went on to see from where the wins of the white teams and losses of the red teams came.

Looking at this had my eureka moment and I understood why was I feeling off after my level 1 inference.

Most of the wins for white teams came from the Top 8 segment. On the other hand, the reds were nearly equally distributed in all three segments.

Conclusion

Teams in white won not because they were wearing white but because they were better teams (both on the day and as per FIFA rankings).

So, there is no relation between jersey colors and victories; only the best team wins!

PS

Thank You for reading till the end, this was my first info analysis, it will be great if you can share some feedback! BTW, which team are you supporting?