A Swiss coach can still hope: these twelve countries are competing for the last three European Championship tickets

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The “normal” route to the European Championship is over, all qualifying group matches are over. 21 countries have already celebrated their participation in the final in Germany, including Switzerland, which narrowly qualified despite a 1-0 defeat to Romania.

So there are still three tickets available, twelve countries will play against each other in the European Championship play-offs. These consist of three tournaments (A, B and C), in which four teams participate each. Two semi-finals (all on March 21, 2024) and one final (all on March 26, 2024) will be played per tournament. The three winners of the mini-tournaments go to the European Championships.

But which countries are included? The decisive factor is the performance in the Nations League, which took place between June and September 2022. In short: all four winners of the Nations League group in Division A compete in path A of the play-offs for the European Championship. The same applies to paths B and C. However, if you have already secured a ticket for regular European Championship qualifying, the next best countries from the relevant Nations League divisions will move up. But what exactly does that mean?

We’ll start with the last of the three paths because it’s the quickest to explain. The four winners of the Nations League group in this division are Georgia, Greece, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Of these, only Turkey has already qualified and therefore the fifth best team advances. This is Luxembourg.

In the semi-finals, the country that completed the Nations League the best will play against the fourth best country. This results in the following matches in path C: Georgia – Luxembourg and Greece – Kazakhstan.

This path gets a little more complicated. The group winners from the Nations League are Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Scotland. The latter two can already plan for Germany and therefore there are two places available. Ukraine and Finland are going up.

But there is one special feature. Iceland, the seventh best team in the B division, can still compete for a European Championship ticket. This is because almost everyone from the A division has already qualified immediately and there are therefore too few teams available for play-off stage A (see below). Therefore, Finland, Ukraine or Iceland will slide to path A by draw, the other two teams will duel with Israel and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

All four group winners, Spain, Croatia, Italy and the Netherlands, have qualified directly for the European Championship and therefore all places remain vacant. However, 14 of all 16 teams in Division A of the Nations League have already advanced, leaving only Poland and Wales claiming play-off places. In addition, a team from Division B (Finland, Ukraine or Iceland) will switch to the A path.

A special arrangement applies to the last free space. All teams in Nations League Division D are generally not entitled to participate in the play-offs – unless there are too few teams in path A. That is now the case and that is why Estonia, the best group winner from Division D, comes to the hand to kiss. This means that Swiss coach Thomas Häberli (49, ex-Lucerne), national coach of the Baltic States since January 2021, can also have hope for the European Championship.

The final three European Championship participants have not yet been determined at the group draw on December 2 in Hamburg. Therefore, there are 4 placeholders for the winners of path A, B and C in three balls from the draw pot. (ch)

Source : Blick