Twenty down, four more to go. The expanded European Championships is five-sixths completed, and all that remain are the playoffs. Of the nine teams that finished third in their qualifying group, only Turkey have gone through automatically; the other eight will have to scrap amongst themselves for the last four places. So who’s left? Let’s take a look.
Get to know the Euro 2016 playoff teams
There are just four spaces left at France 2016, and eight teams into four spaces just doesn’t go. Which means ... playoff time!
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The seeds
In order to give the best teams the best chance of getting through, and so ensure the highest quality merchandising return spectacle next summer, UEFA seeds the playoffs and keeps the four strongest teams apart. Seeding is done according to the UEFA national team coefficient, which is one of those things that isn’t quite as complicated as it might first appear, but is certainly as boring, so we’ll leave it there.
The upshot, anyway, is that the four seeded teams are Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ukraine, Sweden and Hungary, who are, apparently and respectively, the 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th best teams in the continent. Two things jump out from that short list. The first is that if UEFA's rankings were actual placings, then all four sides would be already be qualified. The second is that if you're a non-seeded side, you want to be playing Hungary.
At least, that seems to be the case intuitively. The other three all have a little splash of quality about their teams, a player or two that makes them dangerous. Bosnia & Herzegovina have Edin Dzeko (formerly of Manchester City and currently of Roma) up front, and have won five from six qualifiers under new manager Mehmed Baždarević. Ukraine can call on Yehven Konoplyanka (Sevilla) and Andriy Yarmolenko (Dinamo Kyiv). Sweden, meanwhile, have the shy, humble figure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who recently proclaimed that missing Euro 2016 would be “unimaginable”. Bless him.
The only slight wrinkle in this reasoning is that of all the playoff teams, Hungary were the closest to automatic qualification: had Turkey not managed to beat Iceland in their last group game, it would be the Hungarians going through automatically. We don't know how much should be read into that, however, since Hungary were in Group F, aka Group of Really Effing Weird, aka The One Where Northern Ireland Finished Top and the Faroe Islands Beat Greece Home and Away.
Which is a roundabout way of saying: they really have don’t have any big name players, and while they might be alright, they might also be secretly rubbish. Adjust your expectations according to your favourite.
The non-seeds
What about the other four, then, the teams that UEFA aren't so keen to see next summer? Probably the most annoyed to be slumming it down here will be Denmark, who are 21st in UEFA's big list, a mere two points behind Hungary. (Two points could be a lot, depending on the scale, but we're talking about the difference between 27,142 and 27,140.) Along with the Danes come the Republic of Ireland, Norway and Slovenia.
All can point to at least one decent win during qualifying, suggesting at the very least that none will be pushovers. Slovenia beat Switzerland last October, while Denmark beat Serbia home and away and were only just beaten to automatic qualification by the Albanian miracle. Norway, meanwhile, were still in with a chance of winning their group come the final round of fixtures and were leading Italy for nearly an hour, only to ship two in the last quarter and slump down to third.
Most notable, of course, was Ireland's 1-0 victory over Germany, a masterpiece of stout defending, good fortune and the joys of a well-struck long ball. They frustrated Poland in the final game as well, though they couldn't quite overcome Robert Lewandowski. However, come the first leg the Irish will be missing both Jonathan Walters and John O'Shea through suspension, which might be a problem.
So, in summary: if you’ve a horse in the top half, probably hope for Slovenia. In the bottom half, possibly hold out for Hungary. If you’re a neutral, well, we reckon some kind of Scandinavian derby might be fun. Or Sweden against Ireland, that might work. The draw will be held this coming Sunday, and the games are to be held in mid-November. While we wait, we can all enjoy the fact that the only Nordic side already qualified are tiny little Iceland.
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