There are a number of impressive goalkeepers heading across Europe for the European Championships this summer, all vying for the coveted Golden Glove at this year’s games.
Here at NetBet, we’ve got a number of markets for the upcoming Euro 2020 competition, which was delayed by a year due to the pandemic. One of the most exciting bets for fans at every major international tournament is the outright market for the goalkeeper to keep the most clean sheets, and we’ve got you covered with some great prices on the NetBet Euro 2020 page.
Who are the best bets for the Golden Glove?
Manuel Neuer, Germany’s goalkeeper, is ranked by many as the best stopper at the tournament, and with a defensive setup like he has in front of him, this would seem like a good bet. However, our concern would be with their fixtures at the early part of this tournament. They open with a clash against world champions France, who could theoretically be fielding a team that includes Karim Benzema, Kylian Mbappe and reigning Golden Boot champion Antoine Griezmann. The odds of a clean sheet in this game for Neuer are so slim, and then just days later they face Portugal. Boasting one of the most prolific goalscorers in the history of the sport in their captain Cristiano Ronaldo, as well as a number of other goal threats, there’s a chance Germany go without a clean sheet until they face Hungary, and could even be knocked out in the group stages.
There are some great goalkeepers at this tournament, but some of them are playing for nations who will probably be conceding a number of goals regardless of how talented they are. We’d imagine that Finland’s Lukas Hradecky, for example, and Peter Gulacsi of Hungary, will be top performers for their nations, but can they keep a record number of clean sheets? We’d be very surprised.
We quite like Spurs goalkeeper Hugo Lloris with France for this one particularly if you believe that France are going to go ahead and win the tournament outright. Assuming they were to do that, the last four Euros finals have ended with the winner having not conceded in the final, so that’d be one game right there. Lloris had a subpar season with Spurs, but in this French team we’d imagine he’ll have a strong base from which to be confident that he will be able to keep the requisite number of clean sheets to win this award.
Courtois could be the man
We like Lloris as our favourite, but there’s also something to be said for Thibaut Courtois getting the nod in nets for Belgium. He’s widely believed to be one of the best shot stoppers in the world, which coupled with their relatively low-scoring group which features Russia, Denmark and Finland, they could be leaving the group with two or three clean sheets, meaning just one in the knockout stages would be enough for him to reach the amount of shutouts that Manuel Neuer achieved to win this award at Euro 2016. If he gets even clean sheets against Finland and Russia, but concedes against Denmark as is expected, that still puts him in good stead for the rest of the tournament. And speaking of Denmark, might Kasper Schmeichel be worth a look? They’ll definitely be expecting to make the knockouts, which could be enough time for him to sneak the award.
We expect Courtois or Lloris to get the nod in this category, but you can bet on whoever you believe will win over at the NetBet Euro 2020 page, where you can also get odds on multiple outright markets, and daily markets on every single match that takes place.