Please not Greece again, have had enough of them after 4 defeats in a row. They also look the strongest of those listed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
Please not Greece again, have had enough of them after 4 defeats in a row. They also look the strongest of those listed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
Why is it 100% confirmed we’ll be in a 4 team group?Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
Dale Johnson says so
FIFA apparently released their World Cup draw regulations last night/this morning which has confirmed it. Makes things a bit easier in terms of fitting in match dates as we (and the other Nations League playoff teams) can't play qualifiers in March. There will probably be teams with four qualifiers played (in the March and June windows) before we even start in September.Quote:
Originally Posted by elatedscum
The only way it could have happened is if we got England or Switzerland who were both not playing playoffs. It would basically have been a 14.29% chance if the first seeds were locked in, 12.5% chance if all totally randomised and a 4.47% chance if seeds were prioritised sequentially. Would have been the better path for us. It's kinda needless to lock the second and third seeds into 4 group teams but UEFA.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
We now have 6 groups available to us, which will include the 4 best teams in Europe (last time was Spain, Croatia, Italy, Netherlands) and 2 other top seeds, so very likely to get a top tier team, a France, Spain, Germany type team.
In the second seeds, we can get: Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary, Serbia, Greece, Slovakia (not massive difference between the two groups of seeds) - can't get (Sweden, Wales, Poland, Romania, Norway, Czech Rep.)
Couldn’t we do with a really top tier 1st seed though? A team that’ll win all 6 of its matches. I can’t see any other way of sneaking second, unless we’re the only ones to nick something off the top team.
It’s basically a NL group again where there’s no debate about whether 3rd is any good or not.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And I wouldn't completely rule out the Greeks if we got them again.. they're decent, but if we could win the play offs and get a decent camp together, we might be a bit more organised come September
I've kind of written off the WC anyway.. if you offered me guaranteed WC or Euros, I'd take the Euros.. we have to be in our home Euros
By the way.. another thing making the play offs so important
If Norn Iron are still considered "part of the bid".. then they'll be in Path B next time
Only two of the "bid Nations" get automatic qualification
England will qualify through groups, so us, Scotland, Wales.. you'd imagine one of Scotland and Wales would qualify.. leaving us in by default
But, if Norn Iron are in the mix..then as a Path B team, they'd automatically be ranked higher than us, should we drop to Path C..
Then we'd need two of Scotland, Wales, Norn Iron to qualify direct for us to pick up a default spot
March's games will be so so important for us for the next half a decade
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
Maybe, it's all low probability because you have to ultimately end up in the Top 16 in Europe, which given our current plight is very difficult.
But I think you'd definitely hope for a weak first seed like Austria. Imagine you get Austria and Slovakia and the Faroes - you've got an outside chance to win the group which qualifies you directly and I don't think you're any less likely to come second. If you get say Germany and Slovakia and you come second - then you're in a quarter final, let's imagine with Poland and then a final against Ukraine (so even if we come second, we've only got max a 20% chance of qualifying for the world cup. It drops dramatically if a second seed underperforms (think France going to the playoffs in 2009)
Once again, mapping it out. Group winners:
Austria 55%
Slovakia 23%
Ireland 22%
-
Germany 96%
Slovakia 2%
Ireland 2%
and chance of assuming the favourites win, then the chance is still about 50-50 between you and Slovakia.
So qualification likelihoods in Scenario A is about 32% and in Scenario B is 12%.
You could argue whether a bad second seed is more important that a bad first seed - but i think both second seed pools are pretty equal, so I don't think our chances of getting a bad team really change much depending on which group (2 strong teams, 2 average teams, 2 weak teams - maybe the 5 team group is a little weaker)
Bulgaria it is.
Have to be happy with that - albeit we drew twice with them in 2020, so it certainly won't be a gimme.
Bloody hell Bulgaria lost 5-0 to the North last month,would be a disappointment to lose over 2 legs to them you’d feel……
Well, the Charlton years kicked off with a win in Bulgaria.. albeit, a Scottish win.. so maybe this might be a sign, that we've hit the bottom and will start to climb from here
They're beatable.. but we'll have to be on our game.. but they are beatable
I can see two pretty boring games coming up though
I see the poor Scots got stuck with Greece
Bulgaria beat them in Sofia in September, that was the North's only loss in the groupQuote:
Originally Posted by joey B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E...ague_C#Group_3
Strangely it's also Bulgaria's only defeat in the past 12 months, and they've only conceded twice this year outside of that game.Quote:
Originally Posted by joey B
But that's the Nations League for you in a way. They were bottom of their Euro qualifying group before that, without a win in a group of Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and Lithuania. They did draw at home to Hungary and home and away to Serbia though, so they're not without their moments.
Let's not talk them up. They drew twice with Belarus, and lost 5-0 away to the North in their NL group. And judging by their 2024 results, they do not have a striker (6 goals in 10 games). Very beatable opposition.
They've lost once in their last twelve with three wins. Previous to that they lost six from eight. They are draw merchants.
Since the 90s, is there another nation in Europe who have fallen as much as ourselves & Bulgaria?
It's a great draw
They aren't complete minos, but v beatable. Think of the confidence boast. If we beat them.
We will have beaten Finland twice who these players lost twice too and beaten Bulgaria who we couldnt beat last time.
Last time we played Bulgaria, we started with a front line of Ronan Curtis, James Collins and Daryl Horgan. No disrespect to these players, but our options are considerably stronger now than then. And looking at the current Bulgaria squad, the bulk of their players are pulled from their domestic league which is ranked 28th in Europe. The LOI is ranked 32nd for reference. Nothing is a gimme in international football but we have to be backing ourselves here.
happy out, flights booked, roll on 2025!
You've booked already! Fair ,playQuote:
Originally Posted by zero
It's a decent draw. It would be disappointing not to get the better of them over two legs. Maybe they're better than I'm giving them credit for but I honestly couldn't name a single current Bulgarian player - maybe they have some younger talent coming through?
Hungary collapsed from the late 80s onwards and have only recovered recently. Bulgaria went higher than us (World Cup Semi Final) and have fallen further and for longer I'd say. Norway haven't qualified for anything since Euro 2000. Scotland went from France 98 to Euro 2020 without qualifying for anything. Wales of course famously didn't qualify for anything from 1958 to 2016.Quote:
Originally Posted by MylesNotMiley
But Greece must have had one of the biggest and swiftest ever collapses - they won Euro 2004, qualified for Euro 2008, WC 2010, Euro 2012 and WC 2014, then collapsed to 1 win in 10 games in a soft Euro 2016 qualification group and haven't qualified for anything since. Obviously they're on the way back now.
I think the point is that loads of countries of similar size to us go through lean spells, but eventually come back from them. Bulgaria's fall seems longer and deeper than most though. This playoff might give us a hint as to whether we're on a Bulgaria trajectory (I don't think we are) or something on a smaller scale.
This is important, but as I understand it not in respect of the north. They're understood to be accepting that they are no longer involved as far as automatic qualification goes. However, we do need to stay in B to compete with Scotland and Wales as, in the not unlikely event that none of the three qualify automatically, the Nations League ranking next time might be used to allocate the two automatic qualification places. That said, Scotland and Wales may well be in the A division anyway, so it may not be seen as a fair way to allocate the places and they may use performance in the qualification groups, or a mini playoff instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Insidetherock
Didn’t Aidan O’Brien score against them too to secure a 1-1 draw? From a Callum O’Dowda cross? Or did I imagine that?Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Just realised that was against Poland. Expected O’Brien to kick on a bit tbh. He played very well in a couple of games for usQuote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Just looking through the Bulgaria squad it's incredible that they now haven't got a single player contracted to a club in a Top 5 European league (for contrast we have called up 16 in the last year, even in our current state). Was reading a few articles about what's gone wrong in Bulgarian football and their situation makes our current issues look small in comparison. We really need to be putting them away in March, no excuses here.
Remember them in ‘94. Lethal!Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
Yordan Letchkov (sp) was one of my favourite players of that tournament! Class! They played some great stuff too, all round. A lot of fun watching them in that tournament.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Of course, Stoichkov was the star but, boy, could he moan... at the ref, his opponents, his teammates - at one point, against Sweden I think, he fell over and lost the ball - when he got up he was scowling and muttering and Jimmy Magee said "Sometimes, I think, he even hates himself"Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
Seemingly Boris Mihaylov, who was the goalkeeper in that team, went on to become a John Delaney type figure in the Bulgarian football association and is blamed for a lot of their more recent troubles.
The keeper with the toupee of course (allegedly!)
Can you really trust a man that won't show you his real scalp ? !Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
His son Nickolay was a good keeper, at least in his early 20s. He was bald by 21, so I strongly suspect, on a windy day, the toupee might not have fallen far from the tree…Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Back in 2008, I befriended a lad from Bulgaria who I asked about Valeri Bojinov and Nickolai Mihaylov - and he ended up ranting about Boris and corruption in the football association and the country at large. He was also shocked to see our attendances at a friendly - I think it was around 43,000 in Croke Park against Serbia. I think he said their most recent friendly had about 3,000 people at it (against Finland maybe?)
Thinking back to that time, you used to have 7 and 8 team groups to qualify for a tournament unlike our new poxy 4 team groups. 14 games… we’ll have 6 to qualify for a World Cup
Those were the days… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA...008_qualifying
David Healy scored as many goals in one qualifying campaign as anyone had scored in their entire Northern Ireland career (at the time) - that’d be like Evan Ferguson scoring 68 goals in the qualifiers next autumn.Quote:
Originally Posted by elatedscum
Over to you Evan !Quote:
Originally Posted by elatedscum
Considered doing the same but getting to Plovdiv is the guts of a full day of travel for me. No direct flights from Ireland in March either.Quote:
Originally Posted by zero
Apparently an about turn has been done on this and the draw has been opened up again, adding a small possibility that we could still get a five team group and have two qualifiers in June.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
In this regard and only this regard would I offer some solace with Bulgarians. Post Chernobyl fall out, large enough parts of Bulgaria were ‘toxified’ by radiation fall-out. It became a thing, sudden total hair loss (total alopecia) among many young men. Another footballer from the same area was Stillian Petrov, a heathy young man stricken with acute leukemia, that being a major disease effect of the post-Chernobyl disaster.Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfhear
Bulgaria’s gov. (i.e. Kremlin approved) put the lid on the reports they themselves commissioned post Chernobil, but somehow the original reports themselves were leaked out.
In football terms, Bulgaria are where they should be in the rankings, I’d bet the garden shed that Ireland will be too good for them.
Seems like there’s now a small chance of us being in a 5 team group - with England / Switzerland - due to a change FIFA has just made to the qualifying procedure.
https://x.com/dalejohnsonespn/status...ydrwumxbzBxdHQ
Bulgarian manager has stepped down - https://www.bfunion.bg/news/50798/0
he was double jobbing as manager of Bulgarian league side Cherno More, and the other clubs were not happy about this
(translated using Google translate)
Quote:
Today, March 4, the head coach of the Bulgarian national team, Ilian Iliev, submitted his resignation electronically. It will be considered at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Bulgarian Football Union, which will be held next week.