UEFA Euro Qualifiers - The Road to England 2021

Some group E games will be played in February:

Monday 31 August 2020
Scotland Women’s National Team’s matches against Cyprus and Portugal, which were due to be played in September, have been postponed until February 2021 by UEFA.

Scotland were scheduled to play Cyprus away from home on 18 September and at home to Portugal on 22 September.

With several domestic competitions yet to restart across countries in Europe, the decision has been made to reschedule the matches with Scotland still set to play against Albania and Finland in October.

Following the October fixtures, Scotland will take on Portugal and Finland at the end of the year.

The venue and dates for the Cyprus and Portugal matches in February 2021 will be confirmed in due course.


The next FIFA international window is 15-24 February 21, then in April 5-13 where the play-off should be played in all logic.

And then UEFA can start the FIFA WWC 2023 preliminary qualifying round.

 

It is now confirned what I had written back at the time of the draw: Italy was the seeded team that got the worst possible pot 2 opponent!

I still wonder about ITA-ISR, that could be relevant to decide if Italy will be one of the best 2nd-placed teams. It looks like the catch-up game has not ben re-scheduled yet.

 

I've heard that FIFA wanted to introduce a new qualifing system for WWC (akin to the two path UWCL qualifiers) but still there are no real news about it.

 

Honestly, I think the best thing to do would be to make the Euro qualify most of the WWC spots, but concurrently run a qualifying tournament with the non-Euro teams and then have play-offs between the bottom Euro teams and top non-Euro teams for the remaining WWC spots. I really don't think there's time in the schedule to do much else.

 

Well it will depend on when FIFA will decide the allocations for each confederation. No idea when a decision will be made on this.

 

Yeah... Lord knows we've spent enough time going back and forth over berths in the 2023 qualifiers thread. X-D

But you'd think it's not that hard of a decision to make, it should've been done either along with the decision to expand or at least with the decision to grant hosting rights.

 

This has to happen if we want to know the best three second placed teams in December:
- Italy lose in Denmark
- Iceland wins in Slovakia and Hungary
- France and Austria win at least one of their remaining games
- Belgium don`t lose against Switzerland
- Portugal draw with Scotland, Scotland don`t beat Finland and Portugal lose against Albania or Portugal lose against Scotland, Scotland lose against Finland and Portugal don`t beat Albania.

Iceland, France or Austria and Belgium or Switzerland would be the qualified second placed teams.

Possible is also:
- Italy win in Denmark
- Portugal draw with Scotland, Scotland don`t beat Finland and Portugal lose against Albania
- two of these scenario happen:
- Russia don`t beat both Kosovo and Turkey
- Iceland don`t beat both Slovakia and Hungary
- France or Austria don`t get more than one point from their last two games.

Denmark/Italy, Belgium or Switzerland and one of Russia/Iceland/France/Austria would be the qualified second placed teams.

 

Well it was the last of the seeded teams so that seems fair.

 

So not counting the Host:
Of teams that have won the European Championship 100% has already qualified.
Of teams that placed 2nd but never won 50% has already qualified.
Of team whose best place is 3rd or lower 0% has qualified.

 

Watched the Iceland/Sweden replay; despite missing their two best players on a squad that obviously(population wise) doesn’t go very deep, they still took the game to Sweden & were unlucky to loose by 2 goals(which makes it seem like a handy win by the Swedes).

On the other hand, based on the players NOT starting, Sweden could field an B squad that would probably rank in the FIFA top ten(Rolfo, Blackstenius, Ilestedt, Fisher, Rubinsson either were injured or didn’t start). They definitely have a bright future with a deep squad. The only thing I wonder is if their style of letting the opponent come at you & quickly counter, does it work as well in woso as it did for the French men’s at the last WC? Due to the still weakness in woso of clearing the ball from the back, it’s high pressure that seems to dominate. This was so throughly done for example by Denmark who trapped the Italians at midfield & caused the turnovers which led to all their goals. But guessing their taking advantage of the abnormal speed of Sofia Jakobson possesses.

just was wondering Iceland’s one very exotic player with all the long throw ins; what ethnicity is she? (her name might of been something like Jonasdotire, but that’s sound to eerily close to the Jonas Brothers, lol)

 

Maybe I was a little bit hard on my country women but the general feeling is that this Iceland team can do much better, especially attacking wise. Iceland now has new talent that is much expected off. It should also be mentioned that the Icelandic players hadn't played a single match for a about month due to covid restrictrions, whereas Sweden came off a 7-0 win against Latvia and it showed. Regarding Sveindís Jane Jónsdóttir, her father is Icelandic (his first name would be Jón) but I think her mother is from Ghana.

 

Keep in mind, there were only 8 teams in the men's Euros until then, and only 4 in its 1960s and '70s finals. (That Panenka guy didn't take it seriously at all!) I think Uefa were trying not to upstage the World Cup, as opposed to now, when that's their main purpose.

 

I follow women's football very consistently since WWC 2011 (Nadeshiko Japan's win was actually the breakthrough moment for me; it helped that I had stopped following men's football some years before that).

Before 2011, I had followed women's football occasionally (some Italy's matches, some kind of awareness of 1999 WWC...), but nothing that could be compared to my post-2011 passion.

 

I'm waaay too young for that. I actually got into women's football via the EA game FIFA. So, I was making mods in the late 2000s, and at some point I was a bit done with men's teams and I started investigating women's football teams. Therefore, I worked on the first patch during the 2011 Women's World Cup. Then in 2013-2014, I started again. Back then there were no women's models in the game, and we had to make everything from scratch. Then, in 2016, FIFA added women to the game, and we made a really big patch for the game, which had multiple leagues. From then on, I would really watch multiple leagues (NWSL and the Bundesliga were pretty fun in the past years, but now the FA WSL is definitely the best thing to watch). Furthermore, I watch all major tournaments.

This has probably also spurred my desire to 'rank' players according to their skillset.

Some throwback link to one of my early patches for FIFA.
http://soccergaming.com/index.php?threads/fifa-women-14.178482/page-3
http://soccergaming.com/index.php?threads/fifa-16-women-patch.182733/

 

The first women`s football game I can remember to have watched is the semifinal between Germany and Italy at Euro 1989 which I think was also the first Germany game shown live on TV. In these years it was difficult to follow women`s football in Germany because not many games were shown on TV and the only club football match I could watch was the German cup final.

 

First game I attended live was in 1998, it was at University level. Then in 2003/04 I started to follow the Arsenal Ladies properly.

My first France women game was in 2002, England v France at Crystal Palace 0-1 with a Pichon goal. I wrote my first proper match report in 2009 for a u16 game international between France and England.

 

2006 or 2007 for me; I forget when the rumors of WPS began swirling, but my hometown was also trying to get into MLS at the time and the ownership group then also was planning on joining WPS, so a bunch of local fans started forming the Suporters' Group that would support the WPS team. I know I followed the 2007 WWC as closely as I could without cable/satellite (no real streaming back then anyway).

 

Women's football caught my eye for the first time during 2008 OG in Beijing but it wasn't till WWC U17 in New Zeland few months later when I started to really follow the women's game. Young Nadeshiko were brilliant during this tournament and Japan's women footie has stolen me ever since.

First match I attended live was 2009/10 UWCL - RTP Unia Racibórz vs. NV Neulengbach, last one - Japan vs. Argentina at WWC 2019.

 

So you were somewhere there at the stadium in Paris where I was too! It's the last match I attended live for me too.

 

Probably since 1999 WWC but it was on and off. 2011 til now was where I really got into it.

 

Too bad you didn’t do the Kim Hunter The Journey story mode.

 

after stopped coaching girls soccer at u14 in 2013 got into watching every streamed game at the Women’s Euros that summer