While unfortunately for England football went to Rome last night, one punter from Preston in Lancashire at least had a reason to smile after landing a savvy eight-fold accumulator. The bet correctly called the top goalscorer for eight countries at Euro 2020 and brought in a tidy windfall of £2,429 off a stake of only £5.
Our victor somehow managed to predict the top net finders for Belgium, England, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia and Spain, in a call that would give Mystic Meg a run for her money. The punt also beat off odds of 485/1 to come in, but our winner still had a nervous wait for it to come up last night with players from England and Italy still capable topping their respective scoring charts and making the bet a loser. Here’s how the cash was claimed.
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First up on the hitlist was a pair of easy calls to make, as our punter backed Romelu Lukaku to be Belgium’s top scorer and also picked Robert Lewandowski to do similar for Poland. Lukaku got off to the perfect start by grabbing a brace in the opening game and his four tournament goals was enough for him to be the leading goal-getter for The Red Devils. Poland disappointingly exited the competition at the group stages but our winner didn’t care about that, as Bayern Munich’s star man found the net three times and with only one other Pole scoring at Euro 2020, Lewandowski led the way for them.
Next up were Russia, where Artem Dzyuba was the selection for our victor. He may not have matched his heroics at the last World Cup, but his single goal was enough for him to jointly top the Russian stats sheet along with Atalanta’s Aleksei Miranchuk. Meanwhile, given that he’s on every set-piece going, it was almost impossible to pick anyone else to be Portugal’s leading scorer other than Cristiano Ronaldo. The great man gobbled up five goals at the tournament, and his single assist was enough to see him claim Euro 2020’s Golden Boot award – just pipping Patrik Schick of the Czech Republic to it.
It was a controversial call ahead of the competition, but recalling Karim Benzema to the France squad certainly worked out for Didier Deschamps and our victor. The Real Madrid frontman picked off four goals, including a pair against Switzerland in the last 16, to firmly secure his spot at the head of the French attack from now on.
Elsewhere, Alvaro Morata is lucky that ‘own goal’ doesn’t count towards this market or else he’d have been given a run for it in the race to be Spain’s top marksman. Despite being criticised from pillar to post, Morata did find the onion sack three times for Luis Enrique’s men, which included a beautifully worked goal to get them back into their semi-final with Italy. Of course, he then cost Spain (and himself) the chance to add to his tally in the final by missing the penalty that sent his nation home in the shootout.
Then we were onto the final, where the bet was delicately poised as our customer needed Harry Kane and Lorenzo Insigne to hang on to their places at the top of the charts. Kane was ahead of Raheem Sterling by a single goal, but our victor was in a much more precarious position with Italy as five Italian players – including Insigne – shared their top scorer spot with two goals as the Euro 2020 final kicked off.
Thankfully for our winner it was two defenders who netted their first goals of the tournament in the final, with Luke Shaw and Leonardo Bonucci both on target. So, when the ref blew the whistle after 120 minutes to send the game to penalties, it sent our star punter into dreamland as Kane and Insigne could then not be caught at the head of their respective rankings and the cash was on its way to Preston.
That’s a Hall Of Fame worthy punt in our book!
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