Three games, three wins by favorites: Thursday brought no surprises at the European Football Championship: Ukraine prevailed against North Macedonia, Belgium against Denmark and the Netherlands against Austria.

Halfway through the group stage, the first teams are already in the round of 16.

Thanks to the mode with which the four best third of the six groups progress, only North Macedonia has been eliminated so far.

So it remains exciting.

Tobias Rabe

Responsible editor for Sport Online.

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    In the first game on Friday (3 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship and on MagentaTV), two teams will play that have made a good start to the tournament. Slovakia defeated Poland and now has a good chance of reaching the quarter-finals. Sweden won 0-0 against Spain. And now? In the direct duel in St. Petersburg, the Scandinavians have better prospects according to the calculation model by Daniel Memmert and Fabian Wunderlich: Sweden's probability of victory is 51.5 percent, that of the Slovaks only 20. 28.5 percent speak for a draw.

    Then (6 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ZDF and on MagentaTV) it continues in Glasgow. There the Czechs defeated Scotland in their first game. Now it's against Croatia, which was defeated by England and is already under pressure if the 2018 World Cup runner-up does not want to be eliminated early. And the chance of success in the second European Championship game is not that bad: 44.1 percent speak for the Croatians, 27.4 for the Czech Republic. A draw has a probability of 28.5 percent.

    The roles are more clearly distributed in the final game of the day (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ZDF and on MagentaTV).

    England are the clear favorites at Wembley in London against their neighbors from Scotland, who are threatened with a second defeat.

    The Three Lions are 71.3 percent likely to win.

    For the Scots, who recently conceded a goal from the center line, only 9.7 percent speak, for a draw the value is at least 19 percent.

    And what do I do now with my knowledge?

    The best thing to do is to try your luck in the EM prediction game on FAZ.NET.

    There are prizes worth a total of 8,000 euros to be won.