It is a fact: the last four major international football competitions have been won by countries in economic crisis. Greece the 2004 European Championships, Italy the 2006 World Cup and Spain the 2008-2010 double. “Southern Europe” has thus triumphed, in the face of spreads, ratings and unemployment: Will it be the same in this year's edition in Poland and Ukraine?
This was asked by the Dutch bank ABN-Amro, which published a study entitled "Soccernomics 2012" which follows those done several times in the past on yet another, perhaps vain, attempt to demonstrate a link between football and the economy. Which with these winds of crisis, takes on an even more interesting meaning: will the "poor" still manage to emerge? It would seem so, since Spain, which has just asked for help from Brussels to save its banks from financial disaster, is still favored by bookmakers 3 against 1. And above all, what would be the most desirable result for the future of Europe?
According to ABN-Amro, the important thing is that a Eurozone country wins. And possibly one of the strongest economically, such as Germany (actually among the favourites) or even better France. “The contagion of the crisis has already spread among the most fragile nations – they explain from the Dutch bank -, this must also be prevented from happening to the more virtuous ones. And among these, the one most at risk is France. Therefore, we we predict that the Germans will win, but a French victory would be the best thing to restore confidence in the eurozone".
So: European yes, but euro first of all. However, going to read the research, it is noted that just half of the participating nations belong to countries that use the euro: apart from the two mentioned, Italy, Greece (for how long?), Spain, Holland, Ireland and Portugal. Russia and Ukraine are out of the EU, Croatia will join in 2013, the Czech Republic and Poland have yet to decide if and when to adopt the single currency, while Denmark, Sweden and England have already decided that they won't.
Here, England. According to ABN-Amro, she is the team to "gufare": "Precisely because the victory of France or Germany would lead to the conviction that the hard core of the monetary union is more solid than one believes, conversely a success of the British (or, more improbably, of the Scandinavians) would delight the eurosceptics". A rather obvious reading, one might say, even if the analysis of the Dutch bank presents other interesting cues.
For example, it is underlined how for the first time (1976 edition in Yugoslavia separately, but it took place in only 4 races), the tournament is hosted by emerging countries, to which the event, and football in general, could give a further boost to the two GDP growth trends that already appear to be the best on the continent in 2011: +5,2% for Ukraine, +4,3% for Poland, in first place among the EU countries. The two Eastern countries are also among the few, since 2010 to date, that have not seen their rating lowered by Standard & Poor's: Ukraine has gained a notch and is now B+ (better than it among the participating nations only the Czech Republic: two points more and AA-), while Poland remained substantially unchanged at A-. Only Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, Holland and Denmark held, while France itself fell to AA+, not to mention the collapse of the so-called PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).
Will they still be the “poor” of Europe who win? Or will it be the turn of rich Germany, which hasn't won anything since 1996? The important thing, for the Dutch of ABN-Amro, is that the perfidious Albion doesn't make it. It would be yet another, indigestible commercial against the much-mistreated single currency.
