Click the thumbnail above to view a larger map of the Euro 2012 final groups
The UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament (soccer tournament, if you hail from North America) will be a major highlight of European sports fans’ 2012 calendar.
Being an Irish company, we’re particularly delighted to see the Irish team make it into the finals after a 24-year absence.
The football fans in our team have come up with two interesting maps to share. The first map (above) shows the final groupings.
We were interested to see that two of the four groups (Group A & Group B) show geographic clustering. We expect some fierce local rivalry from Group B in particular, with 3 of the 4 national teams being neighbours!
In contrast, Group D is very geographically diverse.
Click the thumbnail above to view a larger map of the teams' qualification methods.
Qualifying group winners are understandably dominant. But what is interesting is the geographic spread of group winners: western Europe clearly dominates.
In contrast, the playoff winners are much more geographically diverse.
Will you be following the Euro 2012 tournament? And if so, who do you tip to win? Leave us a comment!
The draw system is quite bad one. Groups are not balanced in terms of quality. I know that host nations should play in their own countries but why putting them as top seeds? Nevertheless I can't wait for the games to begin.