Another round of qualifying for the European Championships in France in 2016 has been completed with only one more round robin to go and still many countries yet to confirm their spots.
England, Austria, Iceland and the Czech Republic confirmed their places in the expanded football extravaganza next year while the likes of Wales, Germany, Poland, Northern Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Russia edged closer towards automatic qualification.
Ok, how many of you bet that England and Austria would be amongst the first two nations to automatically qualify for EURO 2016?
I guess England were in a moderately tricky group with the highly rated Swiss and mercurial Slovenes and average Estonians and Lithuanians and almost irrelevant San Marino. The young talented Swiss led by Stoke City's Xherdan Shaqiri were tipped to cause the Lions the most problems after a pretty decent World Cup performance but proved to be a major disappointment at the start as England romped away with a 8-0 record.
The eternal question remains though - can England finally become real contenders at a major tournament? It is hard to say and it doesn't appear that much has changed. It will all come down to which group they get - this should be boosted by their performance in the qualifiers which was almost akin to the Dutch - funnily enough, the Dutch have performed like England over the last 2 years in these qualifiers and are almost certain to miss out completely.
It will be a fairly youthful England team that goes to France next year led by record goalscorer, Wayne Rooney - Luke Shaw, Nathaniel Clyne, John Stones, Adam Lallana, Jordan Henderson, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are still young and just hitting the peak of their careers. Whether they can mimic the ethos applied by Spain and Germany remains to be seen.
One team guaranteed to mimic that ethos is Austria.
The team from Germany's little brother in the Alps have never really been considered one of the most exciting teams in world football apart from being the losing team in a 7-5 defeat to Hungary in the 1954 World Cup - indeed most of their history has been mired in controversy including that game against their neighbours West Germany in the 1982 World Cup where they settled for a 1-0 defeat so that both sides would qualify.
Since their last appearance at a major tournament in 1998, Austria have languished and been regarded as one of the minnows.
How many world class players from Austria could you count in the last 15 years?
How many Austrian Bundesliga sides made the Champions League group stages in the last 15 years?
However, a revival has started taking place in this decade - like Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, Austria has started taking advantage of its new generation immigrant population and seems to be heading back to the (slightly) glorious days of the 1990s.
David Alaba is obviously the key person for the Austrians - the Bayern Munich utility player has become the talisman for his national side and has been key in Austria's incredible performance in this qualifying tournament. However, he has had help from the rise of his compatriots who are now gracing the Premier League, i.e. Leicester's Christian Fuchs, Stoke's Marko Arnautovic and experienced goalscorer, Basel's Marc Janko.
Austria's revival isn't quite like Belgium's where they've come from nowhere to provide a Premier League Star XI that includes Alderweireld, Kompany, Vertonghen, Chadli, Hazard, Mirrallas, Fellaini, de Bruyne, Lukaku and Benteke - could win the tournament but given their good coaching and team spirit, they could very well be a surprise in France next year.
A big mention to Northern Ireland and Wales too who have really stepped up to the place and are set for automatic qualification. Now it's really the case of praying that Gareth Bale and Kyle Lafferty don't get injured before the tournament.
Who said that this expanded 24 Euro 2016 was bad for football? It might be time to get tickets to France for next summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment