Italy's reward for winning our group is Spain!
Slovakia and N. Ireland are through!
Hungary beating Portugal is the only result that can send Albania through.
If we win tomorrow and the other 3rd place team comes from Portugal's group, we'll be playing France with the winner taking on England or F runners-up. N. Ireland will be playing Wales in that scenario!
So, for example: Croatia plays 3rd in B, E or F. How is it determined if B, E or F?
There are some pretty easy little corners in the draw.
Could very easily have two of Swiss Poland Croatia Hungary Wales N. Ireland Portugal in the semis.
Meanwhile Italy will have to beat Spain and probably Germany to make semis.
Germany Italy Spain France and England are all on the same side!
There is a table on the wiki which determines it.Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
As it stands Croatia play 3rd in B. If group f makes best 4 3rds then Croatia play f. If f don't make it and E (us) make top 3rds then Croatia play us.
If you look at the wiki article, it shows how the third place teams are split - basically there's a different combination for every possible combination of third place qualifiers.
That was a good evening for us. Off to Lille tomorrow afternoon. Fingers Crossed. I have a feeling that Portugal are going to thump Hungary tomorrow and we'll be playing for a tilt at the hosts.
Enjoy RAM. ...and bring on the hosts.
" I wish to God that someone would be able to block out the voices in my head for five minutes, the voices that scream, over and over again: "Why do they come to me to die?"
Okay this is the day. And the last day that you will have to listen to our boring analysis of the permutations.
I think it serves the French right that they go to pains to make their draw the best - Group A winner was always set to play a 3rd placed team and then guaranteed a runner up in the quarters, they don't play a group winner until the semi. Even if they were runner up in A they had it easier than all the other runner ups who most likely got a group winner, but group A runner up got another runner up instead. With the Spain and England upsets they now have all 5 pre-tournament favourites on the same side (France, Germany, Spain, England, Italy).
Anyway ...
Scenario 1 (Likely)
So we beat Italy by a narrow margin and Portugal get at least a draw against Hungary. Then we play France, then probably England in Quarter and then Germany/Spain or Italy in the Semi and probably have Belgium/Croatia in the final. Not good - have to beat Italy, France, England, Spain, Belgium all in a row.
Scenario 2 (I think we could actually win the whole thing)
We avoid France and the bottom half of the draw. So we want Hungary to beat Portugal or we want to beat Italy 3-0 and hope Sweden beat Belgium 1-0. If the Portugal group don't make top 3rd then we play Croatia in Round of 16 and then maybe Poland in Quarter, Wales/Belgium in Semi. If we make runner up then we play winner E (maybe Hungary) then, maybe Wales, then Croatia in semi. It's conceivable that the route to the final would be as easy as Hungary, Wales, Poland or Croatia, Poland, Wales. Either way if we avoid the French section we can make the final without having to play any of the top favourites for the competition.
The Spain and England results in the last few days must have brought into focus the opportunity of picking a team not just to win, but to score goals - do you think we should be thinking that way or is it beyond us to have ambitions of making the final or scoring more than once against an uninterested team?
We will be all out , ALL OUT to beat Italy B by one goal. Even if we manage to get into the top half of the draw - we would be second favorites to beat Croatia by some distance. I'd actually rather play France. Not much of note happened the last time we played them in a competitive game.
Jesus lads, some people have too much time on their hands!!! I'm not even thinking beyond this evening. Beating Italy would be a decent return on our Euros and even if we do manage that I don't expect us to go much further in the competition. And in fairness that's just being realistic. And of course the positive flip of not progressing is that we don't have to see any more clips of Irish fans making tits of themselves out there.
I'm happy the results in recent days has qualification in our hands. I'll take a win of any kind.
Part of me agrees that we just need to think about a win, any win, no distractions.
But the other part of me will be upset when I see Wales or Poland in the Final to know that if things just went the other way that it could possibly have been us. This is a tournament that Denmark won (without qualifying) and Greece have won. And this one in particularly looks like it is being set up for a new winner again.
Right now Croatia are the most likely team to make the final more likely than France, Germany and Spain. Poland are more likely to make the final than Italy. And Croatia are 4th favourite to win outright, ahead of both England and Italy. That's the difference it would mean for us.
What's funnier is that, in recent history, we've recorded more wins against France, Spain, Germany, England and Italy, than we have against Hungary, Poland, Wales and Croatia.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
I think we're a level below Wales and Poland.
Hmm, trying to figure that one out Kingdom! When does "recent" begin?
I actually enjoy looking at the permutations, at first I wasn't sure about this 24 team format but for me it has made these last stage of games more interesting as now other groups effect your chances of qualifying.
Here's is one for you then Morbo.
Imagine that we had beaten Sweden as we should and were supposed to. Can you imagine Italy, Belgium and Ireland playing tonight all trying to avoid 1st and 3rd place...
24 teams is good but the problem is you havent a clue till afterwards what it means, the stations don't really mention the significance.
That would be interesting, Italy would be trying to lose and we'd be having to keep an eye on the other match in order to figure out whether we wanted to win, lose or draw. Likewise Belgium would be watching our match to decide if they want to win or not, a win would get them second so long as Ireland don't get a narrow win, but if Ireland did take the lead then Belgium would have to let Sweden equalise and then we are kind of stuck if the game stayed tied with Belgium/Sweden as we can only finish 1st or 3rd not 2nd.
Best bet for Ireland would probably be to take a big lead against Italy like 4-0, this would force Belgium to try and win the game to get 2nd instead of 3rd and then we'd have to score a very late OG's to reduce the lead to 3 and ensure Belgium get caught top of a 3 way 6 points tie. Would be pretty entertaining I reckon.
I like the quirkiness of the format. It's unpredictable and more a reflection of the world we live in. I'm enjoying the euro's more than the World Cup.
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