Haaland, Harry Kane and Luka Modrić made the noise; Fipster mostly heard the wrong tune

The round did not drift away from Fipster so much as walk off with its coat on. Two home wins were right, six were wrong, and the misses were not neat little slips either. They were the sort that expose a model leaning too heavily on familiar scorers while the actual damage came from elsewhere. That is the awkward bit: the broad shape was sometimes close, but the names on the scoresheet kept being different.

Portugal and Norway were the clean reads

Portugal’s win over Wales was the tidy one. Fipster had a home win at 2-1, and although João Félix supplied the only goal rather than any of the called scorers, the underlying read held: Portugal had enough control to edge it without needing a shootout with themselves. The model was right about the direction of travel even if it missed the passenger in seat one.

Norway against Denmark was even better for the model. The 3-2 finish matched the idea of a home win in a game with goals at both ends, and this one was rescued by Erling Braut Haaland doing exactly what elite strikers tend to do when given room: score twice and make everyone else look slightly underdressed. Martin Ødegaard’s two assists mattered too, because they backed up the pre-match sense that Norway’s attacking supply would be decisive rather than decorative.

The miss that stung most was England v Spain

If one fixture summed up where Fipster overreached, it was England’s defeat to Spain. The model leaned into a home win and spent its confidence on familiar attacking names, but the match was decided by players it had not called: Lamine Yamal struck early, Álex Baena turned creator and scorer in one go, and Mikel Oyarzabal finished it off. Harry Kane did score twice in terms of events listed here — once from open play and once via a missed penalty entry — but that still left England short. The real error was not simply missing Spain’s scorers; it was assuming England’s attacking reputation would carry more weight than Spain’s actual execution.

That same problem showed up elsewhere in different clothes. Türkiye v France turned on Kylian Mbappé, who was never among Fipster’s called scorers for that game. Italy v Belgium went to Mika Godts and Dodi Lukebakio Ngandoli instead of the Italian forwards or Romelu Lukaku that had been pencilled in. Czechia v Croatia followed a similar pattern: Luka Modrić decided it after half-time, with Marco Pasalic adding another goal, while Fipster had been looking elsewhere entirely.

The round belonged to uncalled names more than to predictions made beforehand

The player list tells you plenty about why this round went sideways. Erling Braut Haaland scored twice for Norway; Harry Kane scored twice for England; Kylian Mbappé scored for France; Luka Modrić scored for Croatia; Cody Gakpo rescued Netherlands late; Felix Nmecha opened Germany’s account; Andrija Živković put Serbia ahead before Greece turned it around; João Félix gave Portugal their winner. Of those headline acts, only Cody Gakpo sat inside Fipster’s pre-match scorer calls, and even there he arrived far later than expected.

That is why the two ticks matter more than they might in a kinder week. Portugal and Norway were not perfect reads, but they were structurally sound: home advantage held up where expected goals would have been too polite to say so out loud. The misses came when Fipster trusted established attacking labels more than specific matchups and current finishing form. Next time out, that means less faith in reputation alone and more respect for which side actually has the sharper final pass — because this round made a point of rewarding those details with no apology at all.