UEFA Euro 2016 final tournament in France is closing rapidly! Now the group phase is over and all games have been played. We got 9 winners and 9 runners up and all 18 will join tournament host France in the final event – that’s 19 national teams! We need 5 more. Turkey will join them, as being the best of all third placed teams in group phase. Other 8 national teams finishing the competition in third place, went in special draw and will play 2 more extra qualifying games to gain one of the four more places being left.
In the 18th October 2015 event in Nyon, 4 more pairs were being made in draw and those are:
Pair 1:
Norway vs. Hungary (THU November 12th)
Hungary vs. Norway (SUN November 12th)
Pair 2:
Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Republic of Ireland (FRI November 13th)
Republic of Ireland vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina (MON November 16th)
Pair 3:
Ukraine vs. Slovenia (SAT November 12th)
Slovenia vs. Ukraine (TUE November 12th)
Pair 4:
Sweden vs. Denmark (SAT November 12th)
Denmark vs. Sweden (TUE November 12th)
Best teams
Of course all 9 best placed teams in their groups were surely the best out there and also we could check them out by FIFA World Ranking but let’s make another list.
Best by goals: most goals in this qualifiying round was score by Poland (33), England (31), Belgium (24) and Germany (24).
Best defense: there were many teams playing a really good defense and they received the least goals from the opposing teams: Romania (2), England (3), Spain (3) and Wales (4).
Most goals score in one match: in this rankings, we checked only most goals scored and not how many there was received in the same match, so we don’t care for goal difference – only goals scored: Poland (8 against Gibraltar), Republic of Ireland (7 against Gibraltar), Switzerland (7 against San Marino), Russia (7 against Liechtenstein), Poland (7 against Gibraltar).
3 points for winning and 1 point for a draw, that means that a team could get a maximum of 30 points if it could win all 10 matches. Let’s see which national team summed most points.
Most points: England (30) Austria (28), Spain (27), Italy (24) and Belgium (23).
Best scorers
Robert Lewandowski scored amazing 13 goals for team Poland in this 10 qualifying matches and this brings him to the first place of the best scorers ever in qualifiying matches, along with David Healey (Northern Ireland) who also score 13 goals in the qualifying games for UEFA Euro 2008 tournament.
9 goals were scored by Thomas Müller (Germany) and 8 goals by Artyom Dzyuba (Russia) and Zlatan Ibrahimović (Sweden).
Already qualified teams for Euro 2016 France
This qualifying event started at September 7th 2014 and ended after almost 2 years and each of the national teams played 10 games (5 at home and 5 away). There were also some surprises and probably the biggest is that Netherlands and Greece, both ex-European champions didn’t manage to qualify to the tournament stage. Another 3 strong and disappointed teams are surely Bulgaria, Serbia and Scotland. Besides hosting team of France, 18 more qualified from 9 groups:
Group A: Czech Republic, Iceland
Group B: Belgium, Wales
Group C: Spain, Slovakia
Group D: Germany, Poland
Group E: England, Switzerland
Group F: Northern Ireland, Romania
Group G: Austria, Russia
Group H: Italy, Croatia
Group I: Portugal, Albania
Final tournament
Starting on June 15th 2015 in St-Etienne at 15:00 and 2 more games being played the same day at 18:00 and 21:00 CET (Central European Time), this tournament will again bring many of the best football players from all around the Europe. National teams of Europe are being the strongest and most successful teams in the history of football, including World Soccer Championships and Olympic Games tournaments. In the last published FIFA World Rankings table 14 of the top 20 best ranked teams are from Europe (6 from South America and 1 from Africa). From those 14 best ranked European national teams, only Netherland didn’t qualify for the final event and X more still have possibility to win the extra qualifying matches.
Of course all 9 best placed teams in their groups were surely the best out there and also we could check them out by FIFA World Ranking but let’s make another list.
