EURO 2016 Qualifiers

Originally posted by 8runo
Bah - the expanded Euro 2016 is a joke and qualification is too easy for the "big" teams.:f_tongue:
Life's boring as an England fan (Getting my smugness in now before the inevitable defeat on penalties by Germany next summer)

Labelling it a joke is a little unfair imo. The big teams will qualify if it's 16 or 24 teams. At least this way you get to see some of the lesser nations get a rare chance on the big stage. Look at the likes of Northern Ireland (last major tournament was WC82), Iceland (have they ever played at a WC/Euros?) Wales haven't played one since 1958!

My comment was largely tongue in cheek and a bit of a thinly veiled brag that England had a 100% record - I appreciate that there are advantages (as well as disadvantages) to expanding the tournament.

Slightly less tongue in cheek - if countries like Northern Ireland and Wales aren't good enough to qualify for major championships (and Wales would have probably qualified this time anyway, without the expanded format), that doesn't sound like a reason to expand tournaments to accommodate them to me - on that basis we should keep expanding until the likes of Gibraltar have a chance to qualify from time to time. When we get to France this time, there will be more mismatches and the tournament will take longer to get going properly.... a little how I suspect the Rugby Union world cup will be in the early stages (I'm not really a rugby man, so could be totally wrong...). Matches in tournaments should be competitive where there is genuine doubt beforehand who is most likely to win. If its a procession, its boring......

Not fully got my head around the Nations Cup and how that will shake things up .... from what I can understand its mostly just an additional tournament (with 4 of 24 qualifying spots for next major tournament) with the best team, the 13th best team, the 25th best team and the 37th best team qualifying - not sure I'm understanding it correctly, but if I am it seems a bit random - if you're not going to win your group, then you should try and finish last to get relegated so that you can get easier qualification next time?

@tino
@sdk

What's going on with oranje and dutch side? Are there any problems in team or it's just post wc saturation? I can't believe that they are in this position and can't remember when they played so bad in qualification stage (except WC 2002).

Things to be happy about:

1) Belgium won and didn't play terrible.
2) Wales lost so Belgium is on top of their group.
3) Turkey also won tonight, keeping The Netherlands out of third spot.
4) Depoitre scored a goal in his Red Devils debut.
5) It's the first time since the 84 EC that we actually qualified. Last EC we played (2000) we were a host nation.
6) Israel lost and really needs to get the three points, hopefully creating more space for Belgium to get some nice chances together on Tuesday.

Things to be mad about:

1) Eden fucking Hazard taking the two worst penalties I've seen in a while (and I've seen Anderlecht miss a fair amount).
2) Jan frigging Vertonghen causing a penalty against Belgium.

Originally posted by srna10
@tino
@sdk

What's going on with oranje and dutch side? Are there any problems in team or it's just post wc saturation? I can't believe that they are in this position and can't remember when they played so bad in qualification stage (except WC 2002).

Difficult to said why they play so poorly right now. It’s looks like a structural problem on the moment, but I expect they will not reach the EC this time or a miracle happened Tuesday evening. It’s bad for the Dutch economy as well if that happened, because a lot of consumers are going to cafes and other locations to watch the matches.

Next time better, but the WC qualifications will be tougher I think with only the winner of the group going through and the 2nd place finisher to the play-offs.

The downturn in fortunes seems to coincide with the departure of Louis van Gaal - is he the difference?

I honestly have no idea who or what is the difference. Right now it doesn't help we also have a lot of injuries, but that's definitely not the reason. When some of our 1st team players were playing, we still played like shit so that can't be the reason

The problem isn't that we don't have enough quality players either. We have loads of good players, they just don't seem to really show up during the games :/

imo it's a sum of many things that caused it. All I know is it just sucks that we probably won't be going to the EC

Meanwhile in Ireland....

Even Albania is qualified for the EC. Than it feels even worse that the Netherlands will most likely missed it this time

Belgium with the win, first place in the group, number 1 on the FIFA ranking AND The Netherlands not qualifying for the European Championships? Yeah, today was a good day.

Sweden Denmark ore Sweden Norway i hope in play off

ore what you think guy's?

Sweden
Ukraine (although I hope for Republic of Ireland)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Slovenia

Based on absolutely nothing.

Originally posted by NIVEKii
Belgium with the win, first place in the group, number 1 on the FIFA ranking AND The Netherlands not qualifying for the European Championships? Yeah, today was a good day.

For me it was a amusing match Netherlands against Czech Republic, but was a bad day for Dutch soccer. We will see what Belgium will do in the EC, but I don’t think they will win it in the end.

Originally posted by NIVEKii
Sweden
Ukraine (although I hope for Republic of Ireland)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Slovenia

Based on absolutely nothing.

First see what the draw will bring. Than it’s easier to predict who will go through in the end.

Belgians are massively overrated imo, kinda like England in a way as most of them play in the EPL.

Ireland not seeded (and rightfully so) and face either Sweden, Ukraine, Hungary or Bosnia. I guess Hungary are the weakest there so that would probably be our ideal draw.

I am happy that we qualified, but it was close. 5 wins and 5 draws, was not the way we expected to go to France, especially after out good start. If you ask me, 3 of the 5 draws should have been wins for us: with Hungary, Finland and Greece, all games at home.

Originally posted by SDK1987
First see what the draw will bring. Than it’s easier to predict who will go through in the end.

Haha, guess I wasn't awake at all when I saw that picture! ♦

We (Slovenia) play like shit. So whoever gets us in the play-off, can book a ticket for France 2016 already.
Easiest group, struggled for 3rd place. Should have been 2nd easily.

We even had problems with San Marino lol. I made this gif during the match. I was just facepalming how clueless our coach is/was.

What a sad day for dutch soccer, didn't even watch the match because I knew Turkey would win anyways. Unbelievable, what a mess. Should've stayed away from 4-3-3 and follow the Van Gaal tactics.

Ahh well, at least we can have a laugh about our loss: A video where Van Persie makes his own goal and the comments are from the Netherlands-Spain match (5-1) last world cup. Hilarious

Originally posted by CoreySteel
We even had problems with San Marino lol. I made this gif during the match. I was just facepalming how clueless our coach is/was.

Katanec??