Evaluating the Travelling inequality and final positions of teams in a European Polycentric Tournament: Euro 2020

Abstract

In June and July 2021, eleven cities across Europe hosted a month-long polycentric event. This tournament, known as Euro 2020, witnessed Italy winning the championship after defeating England. One of the criticisms made before, during and after the tournament was on the travelling inequalities as some teams had to travel extensively compared to others. Travelling inequality could have potentially impacted some of the teams' performance and possibly led to unfair competition. Hence, the purpose of this study is to compare the final positions of Euro 2020 teams to their distance travelled per match. All 24 teams that participated in the 2020 Euro were analysed via descriptive statistics. The -0.0846 correlation indicates there are negative relations between both variables. The Spearman's Rank Correlation Test findings -0.0802 revealed no significant difference between the final positions and the distance travel per match of teams in the Euro 2020.