Spain and Italy did the heavy lifting while the model spent the rest of the round guessing wrong

The round started with a simple idea and ended with a rather stern correction. Fipster leaned hard into narrow home wins, but the scoreboard kept finding other routes: away sides nicked it in Serbia, Germany, Norway and Belgium, while Italy turned Türkiye into a brisk lesson in finishing. The two correct calls were useful, though. Spain and Denmark did what the model expected; the trouble was that almost everything else went looking for a different answer.

Spain’s burst was the cleanest read

Spain against Croatia was the one call that looked properly alive before kick-off and stayed that way after it. The model liked Spain’s attacking midfielders, and that part held up neatly: Lamine Yamal was already flagged as a threat in the pre-match notes, then went on to score twice and assist another. Álex Baena supplied the first goal, Pedri helped build the third, and Nico Williams finished it off late. That is exactly the sort of chain reaction the model was trying to catch — not just one scorer, but a side where several creators could turn pressure into goals without much ceremony.

The miss that mattered most was Serbia v Netherlands

This was where the model over-weighted home advantage and under-read who would actually decide it. Serbia were backed for a 2-1 win, but Mexx Meerdink took over instead, scoring twice for the Netherlands — once from the spot and once from open play. Luka Jović’s equaliser briefly made it look as if Serbia might still drag it back to plan, yet Bart Verbruggen’s five saves helped keep them at arm’s length long enough for Mexx Meerdink to settle matters. The lesson is plain enough: when a side has an unexpected finisher in form, you do not get points for admiring your own pre-match symmetry.

The round belonged to names Fipster did not call out

That was the real story across the slate. The reconciliation list is blunt: no called scorer hits at all. So the round’s decisive figures were all unforeseen ones — Mexx Meerdink with two for the Netherlands; Lamine Yamal with two for Spain; Harry Kane adding England’s second in Czechia; João Félix opening Portugal’s win in Norway; Michael Olise striking late for France; Dimitrios Kourbelis doing likewise for Greece; Erling Braut Haaland scoring again even in defeat; and Francesco Esposito turning Italy’s win over Türkiye into something more emphatic than expected. Even Gustav Tang Isaksen mattered more than any pre-match scorer call did in Denmark’s favour.

What this leaves for League A - 3

The useful takeaway is not that Fipster should stop trusting home teams altogether. It is that this round punished broad assumptions more than fine-grained ones. Where there was a clear player edge — Lamine Yamal in Spain’s attack, Mexx Meerdink as Netherlands’ unexpected finisher — the model could have been sharper if it had leaned harder into individual form rather than venue bias. Next time out, that balance matters more than ever: fewer tidy guesses about who ought to win, more respect for who is actually carrying the goals.