Crunch time arrives for Wales and Northern Ireland, while stakes are high for Hungary and Romania, and Russia look to recover under their new coach
1) Wales ready themselves for a momentous week
It does not quite all come down to this – if there is a Paul Bodin moment then Wales will have two games in October in which to make amends – but an opportunity of such stature does not come around too often and Chris Coleman’s side are five days from achieving in style something for which a poor World Cup qualifying campaign offered little hope. Six points against Cyprus on Thursday and Israel on Sunday would send them to France and, while it is entirely plausible that the 180 minutes or so will include a bump or two, any repeat of the authority Wales have shown over the past year should get them over the line well ahead of what would otherwise be an awkward trip to Bosnia next month. And if it does, the atmosphere in Cardiff on Sunday will be one of those genuine “I was there” moments that football can do so well. Much like Scotland, mind you, they have ghosts from 2007 to bury. Wales were beaten 3-1 in Nicosia that October, a watershed moment after which their beleaguered then-manager John Toshack asked: “Did it look like they cared? It didn’t look like it to me.” It says something that, even if the champagne does have to be put on ice this week, nobody would dream of asking that question about the current crop.
2) Greece in turmoil before Finland meeting
Exactly how much gas is in the explosion that is currently renting the Greece national football team asunder? Currently propping up a group that must have looked look far from intimidating on paper, the 2004 European champions have acquired just two points from a possible 18, been beaten home and away by the Faroe Islands and are currently on their third manager of the campaign, who is in for his second stint. Considering the current economic climate in their neck of the woods, Greek football fans probably have far more pressing concerns than the sorry state of their national team but will almost certainly need to look elsewhere for distraction from the prevailing sense of national woe. Following the dismissal of Claudio Ranieri in the wake of their home humiliation at the hands of the Faroes last November, Sergio Markarián was appointed in February and went on to oversee defeat in the return leg, following a scoreless draw with Hungary. “I ask Greek fans for their forgiveness, because our results were not ones we wanted,” the Uruguayan said. “Now I am taking a difficult decision. I am ending my collaboration with the national team of Greece. I thank the players, the fans, the Greek federation, my assistants and the media for their respect towards me.”
The Hellenic Football Federation refused to accept Markarián’s resignation, with their president announcing that he still had faith in their manager. “I continue to believe in him and trust him,” said George Gkirtzikis, before sacking Markarián less than a month later, along with the former Greece captain Giorgios Karagounis, the man who had suggested the federation hire him in the first place. While an acrimonious feud rages between Karagounis and Gkirtzikis, interim coach Kostas Tsanas has been appointed for the second time in this campaign and will be in the dugout when Greece face second from bottom Finland this weekend. Not even a bailout from Germany can help them extricate themselves from this mess, a sad example of how quickly and hard the mighty can fall.
3) The key weekend for Northern Ireland
It’s on, you know. It really is. Northern Ireland look likely to qualify for their first international tournament in 30 years, and their first ever European Championships, but this could prove to be the crucial round of fixtures. Unless something goes awfully awry, they will safely collect three points against the Faroe Islands on Friday (they are of course not the pushovers they once were, having beaten Greece twice already, but that may say more about the Greeks than the Faroes), but it’s the home tie against Hungary on Monday that could prove to be the key. Michael O’Neill’s men are currently two points ahead of the Hungarians, and one assumes the gap will be at least the same by the time the two sides meet at Windsor Park, given Hungary face group leaders Romania as Northern Ireland are, should all go to plan, collecting their victory in Torshavn. That, as the keen mathematicians among you will have worked out, brings the possibility of an eight-point gap to open up between Northern Ireland and Hungary, which with only two games remaining, would secure qualification. “We have less than 50 players in the four leagues in England and top two in Scotland. Full stop,” O’Neill told the Guardian in June. “The problem we have is a lot of those players are in League One and League Two. Roy Carroll is in League Two now. There are 12, 13 players in League One; it is a big jump to playing international football. The Scottish Premiership is a big jump up to international football.” The new qualifying format was always likely to make things easier for teams like Northern Ireland, but to secure passage to France with games to spare would be a remarkable achievement.
4) Albania look to defy the odds twice more
How they got here might be a bone of contention, but Albania have never had it this good. The court of arbitration for sport’s decision in July to award last October’s abandoned match with Serbia to the Albanians – a remarkable U-turn given that the result had originally been given to Serbia, albeit with caveats – did little to quell a regional debate that will rumble on forever but it did bring up one objective truth. Albania, sitting nine points clear of fourth-placed Armenia in Group I with a game in hand, would now need a remarkable sequence of results to deny them a play-off place and there is a strong argument that the perennial outsiders could even go one better. Gianni De Biasi’s team travel to second-placed Denmark, who they sit behind using the head-to-head tiebreaker but having played a game less, on Friday and any kind of positive result would put an automatic trip to France firmly in sight. Should they come unstuck in Copenhagen, a second bite of the cherry will come when leaders Portugal step out to a boisterous atmosphere in Elbasan on Tuesday. These are tough fixtures, but a vastly improved Albania are here on merit despite Cas’s largesse: in the last year they have defeated the Portuguese away, drawn with Denmark at home and recorded a win and a draw against the group’s “ghost” team, France. You would expect them to take something from at least one of the games – and in the best case scenario, what price on Albania securing a remarkable qualification in next month’s rematch against the Serbs?
5) Scotland hope to heed a warning from history
Scotland’s mettle has been well tested in Group D. Away games in Gelsenkirchenand Warsaw might have ground previous sides down, but they emerged from both with credit and came out on top overall in a grimly competitive pair of tussles with the Republic of Ireland. Tuesday’s match against Germany in Hampden Park could be one of the stadium’s great occasions but they have Georgia on their minds first and will be conscious that a setback in Tbilisi would compromise a huge amount of good work. That being the case, it would be as well not to think too closely back to 2007, when Scotland found themselves well favoured to progress from a labyrinthine Euro 2008 qualifying group – whose big hitters included Italy, France and Ukraine – with just two matches to play. A victory in the first of them, in Georgia, would have led them into a Hampden showdown against the Italians with one hand on qualification (and history shows, in fact, that it would have been enough) – but Alex McLeish’s side, which had already won in France, fell flat against an unexpectedly lively home team and were picked off by a practised Italy a month later. This may well be a better Scotland side and is probably a worse Georgia one – their only points in this campaign have come against an inadequate Gibraltar – so Gordon Strachan and company will travel with confidence. Victory would reel in at least one of Poland and Germany, who meet later on Friday evening, and hold off the Irish, who will presumably win handsomely in Faro. The margins for error are wafer-thin now, and negotiating Friday’s hurdle might just provide evidence that this Scotland team is made of something different.
6) Buoyant Slutsky could take Russia upwards with him
When the Russian Football Union decided to end Fabio Capello’s contract following the national team’s second consecutive 1-0 Group G defeat at the hands of Austria, the Italian wasn’t the only man to benefit. He was sent packing with a reported golden goodbye of £10.5m for his troubles, while his dismissal prompted another step in the remarkable rise of his replacement, Leonid Slutsky. Originally contracted to oversee Russia until the end of their own World Cup in 2018, Capello left the national team in danger of failing to qualify for next summer’s Euros. They currently sit third in Group G behind Austria and Sweden, with Montenegro – who were forced to forfeit their home match against Russia due to crowd violence – just three points behind them.
A 44-year-old former goalkeeper whose playing career ended when he was 19 due to injuries sustained when he fell out of a tree while attempting to rescue a cat, Slutsky has form in the field of reviving the fortunes of Russian teams suffering from the ill effects of poor foreign management. The manager of CSKA Moscow since 2009, he successfully cleaned up the mess left by, first, Zico and then Juande Ramos and has since steered the club to two league titles and two domestic cups. Impressive by any standards, not least for a man who was working in the southern zone of Russia’s third division just 10 years ago. A shrewd tactician and tinkerman who habitually cuts a twitchy, nervous and decidedly shambolic figure on the touchline, Slutsky has taken on the role of Russia national team coach in tandem with his duties as CSKA manager until the end of this campaign and will presumably be offered the job on a full time basis if they qualify. Don’t rule it out; the next two rounds of fixtures give Slutsky and his men every chance of reeling in and overtaking Sweden, who will not be relishing the prospect of facing the first Russian team to have a homegrown manager for nearly a decade.
7) Bitter rivals Hungary and Romania meet with stakes high
Tetchy confrontations in the old eastern bloc have been a theme of these qualifiers and Romania’s trip to Budapest on Friday is unlikely to be an exception. Quite the contrary; these neighbours are both bound and separated by history and create a febrile atmosphere whenever they meet, and the stakes are as high now as they have ever been. Handed what is, put bluntly, the qualifying competition’s weakest group – and further aided by the third-place safety net that would, at current rate, be very near to ensuring automatic progress toEuro 2016 – both sides are well placed to go through and each would like nothing better to hinder the other’s cause here.
These are two cautious, underwhelming teams – they have scored just 12 goals between them and conceded four – and the smart money would be a repeat of the draw played out in Bucharest last October, a result that would suit Northern Ireland down to the ground if they win in Torshavn. But the battle tends to rage off the pitch as well as on it in this fixture and, if Romanian sources are to be believed, up to 1,000 may be travelling with football matters not necessarily foremost in mind. Last year’s match was played out to a backdrop of teargas and clashes between supporters; Hungary’s authorities will need to nip any problems in the bud this time and their ability to deal with any trouble from arriving fans may not be helped by the current, deeply unfortunate, scenes at the main station in Budapest. The potential advance of Hungary towards their first major tournament since 1986 would make a far more edifying tale.
8) Dutch show Blind faith
“The structure around the team stays the same,” noted the new Holland coach, Danny Blind, after he succeeded Guus Hiddink in July. “I’m just adding a little different sauce.” The good news for Blind is that the bar of expectation really is pretty low, given that Hiddink “guided” the team to a couple of defeats and a draw in their opening six games, putting them in genuine danger of not finishing in the top two of Group A. But then again that’s the bad news, as Blind has to turn around a flailing set of players and drag them to the finals, which is perhaps not the steepest mountain to climb given that even a third-place finish might be good enough for automatic qualification, and then there’s the play-offs, but still. Blind made his first move to alter his sauce by replacing Robin van Persie with Arjen Robben as his captain (although the Fenerbahce man remains in the squad), but true to his word the squad was largely the same as before, and whether the man who was Hiddink’s assistant anyway will have enough to reinvigorate them is unclear. The Dutch could theoretically finish this round of fixtures top of the group, given they are five points behind unlikely leaders Iceland, whom they face on Thursday. That’s followed by a theoretically spicy trip to Turkey on Sunday, but with the Turks going through a lull of their own under Fatih Terim, a win will be expected. Stabilising his side’s results is the first priority for Blind, but whether he will achieve that through stability in approach remains to be seen.
9) Republic of Ireland need favours to arrest painful decline
Almost certainly reliant now on being good enough to take advantage of a Scotland slip-up or two just to finish third in Group D behind Poland and Germany, the Republic of Ireland’s chances of even making the play-offs for Euro 2016 look extremely remote. In their most recent qualifier, they played as well as at any time in recent memory but still weren’t good enough to beat Gordon Strachan’s fairly ordinary team at home when it really mattered. After their struggles as also-rans of recent years, Northern Ireland, Wales and to a lesser extent, Scotland, are all comparatively resurgent, while Ireland actually appear to have regressed since Martin O’Neill tentatively released the handbrake gripped so forcefully by Giovanni Trapattoni during his time in charge. Their most creative player, Wes Hoolahan, was substituted as Ireland looked for a winner against Scotland, never having been anything more than a bit-part player in a squad where the best of a fairly ordinary lot are all over 30 and the paucity of decent replacements is a genuine concern. Ireland may well have leapfrogged Scotland in Group D by the middle of next week, but no Irish supporters will be under any illusions that this lofty position will be anything other than temporary. Indeed, what’s perhaps more worrying than their inability to beat fairly ordinary teams while playing at their best, is the weary resignation, bordering on indifference, of supporters who have come to expect little else and have taken to voting with their feet.
10) Striking problems for England
You go through phases with England. For a while the biggest hole was on the left, then defensive midfield, then a paucity of options at centre-back, but looking at the current squad the most glaring weakness – in the short term, at least – looks to be up front. The four strikers (if we’re classing Raheem Sterling as a winger) named by Roy Hodgson for the qualifiers against San Marino and Switzerland do not, it must be said, inspire confidence. Wayne Rooney’s recent struggles were encapsulated quite neatly in the chance he dithered over right at the end of Manchester United’s defeat to Swansea, Theo Walcott didn’t, to say the least, convince up top against Newcastle, while Harry Kane looks like a man with the confidence sucked from him, as if he’s been in one of those fruit dehydrator machine things. Only Jamie Vardy looks in any sort of touch, and there’s a reasonable argument that he shouldn’t be in the squad anyway given he recently had to apologise for racially abusing a man in a casino. Of course, it probably won’t matter too much this week, particularly against San Marino, but it does serve as an indication that England need these forwards to rediscover something approaching their joie de vivre at some point soon.
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