As soon as the 2013 play-offs conclude we'll have the final coefficients for the 2015 qualifying round draw. The 2013 qualifying round draw took place on 3 February 2011, so I think the draw for the 2015 preliminaries will take place in late January / early February 2013.
Going by the 2013 procedure, there will be 4 pots of 10 teams and one of 12 teams.
Comparing the pots with those used for the 2013 qualifying draw, 13 teams have changed pots:
Switzerland and France moved from pot 2 to pot 1.
Scotland moved from pot 3 to pot 2.
Montenegro, Norway and Slovenia moved from pot 4 to pot 3.
Cyprus moved from pot 5 to pot 4.
Romania and Serbia moved from pot 1 to pot 2.
Belgium moved from pot 2 to pot 3.
Iceland and Moldova moved from pot 3 to pot 4.
Northern Ireland moved from pot 3 to pot 5.
What's going on with football in the Northern Ireland?
Rank - Team - Points
1 Spain 38545 2 England 33875 3 Netherlands 32889 4 Switzerland 32759 5 Germany 32496 6 Italy 31993 7 Sweden 31388 8 France 30812 9 Russia 30492 10 Israel 30302 ---------------------------- 11 Romania 30285 12 Serbia 29084 13 Turkey 28842 14 Denmark 28666 15 Ukraine 28300 16 Scotland 28234 17 Portugal 27902 18 Austria 27577 19 Belarus 27473 20 Wales 27322 ---------------------------- 21 Greece 26951 22 Slovakia 26732 23 Belgium 25614 24 Hungary 25589 25 Armenia 25231 26 Croatia 25096 27 Montenegro 24014 28 Finland 23846 29 Norway 23414 30 Slovenia 23179 ---------------------------- 31 Bosnia-Herzegovina 23036 32 Poland 22176 33 Georgia 22111 34 Iceland 21958 35 Moldova 21646 36 Republic of Ireland 20471 37 Bulgaria 19464 38 Cyprus 19021 39 FYR Macedonia 18964 40 Latvia 18471 ---------------------------- 41 Northern Ireland 18214 42 Albania 16471 43 Faroe Islands 16036 44 Lithuania 15771 45 Azerbaijan 15376 46 Kazakhstan 15338 47 Estonia 15260 48 Malta 11863 49 Luxembourg 10638 50 Andorra 9013 51 Liechtenstein 8238 52 San Marino 8110
The numbers seem weird...Norway with 23014 ahead of Slovenia 23179 and Bosnia 23036?
ReplyDeleteYou're right - I had the minimum possible values for the teams involved in the play-off, but they were sorted by the correct values.
DeleteFixed now.
Northern Ireland are terrible lately. I don't know if it's happening across the board, but the Republic of Ireland have been active in stripping the best talent for their own team. Not that the Republic are doing much better here.
ReplyDeleteEveryone thinks Stuart Pearce is a joke, yet there we are with the second best record. We were top of that ranking the last cycle I believe. Hopefully England beat Serbia and qualify for a phenomenal fourth straight U21 Euro.
So we didn't win one. So what. The coach's job is to get the team to the tournament, so the players can experience tournament football in addition to a qualifying campaign. No nation except England has achieved three straight qualifications the last three Euros, with a semi and a final in there. Hopefully England and Pearce make it four. And more. Other nations would love his record at this level.
Oh and he came in for a ton of stick for getting knocked out of the Olympics. With a scratch team thrown together at the last minute and treated as fairly unimportant with the nation devided on the team and the very concept of Olympic football, with our best players not allowed to be chosen, the ones taken to Euro 2012 while the other nations had played like 20 matches together in qualifiers and friendlies and had no such restrictions and their own FAs taking thetournament very seriously while we get one friendly before the tournament and he still won his group and went out on penalties in the QF to a team England had played better than, and missed a penalty in normal time.
Delete@ Lorric Hopefuly not. In Serbia everyone was kind of happy that we draw England, not Spain or Germany. Problem is that 6 players of U21 are now playing for the A tim ( they destroy Wales) and most likely will be absent from U21 games with England :(
DeleteWe have a few players in the senior setup too. Not as many as 6 though I don't think.
DeleteI would accept being happy with not getting Spain or germany, they crushed their qualifying groups. You look at all the other seeds, and there really isn't much between them.
Looking at it though, England did produce the third best performance of the ten group winners, behind Spain and Germany.
DeleteIf you look on that way. On the same time England lost one game, while serbia did not.England's group was however very hard too with strong teams like Norway and Balgium.
DeleteMatija Nastasic, Aleksandar Ignjovski, Filip Djuricic, Lazar Markovic, Nikola Maksimovic, Srdjan Mijailovic and Darko Lazovic ; actually 7 members of U 21 team were in the A team against Wales. They will be absent from the game with England as well unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteThat is big handicap for U 21 but big plus for the A team, which is without doubt the youngest national team in Europe right now. The oldest player against Wales was Bane Ivanovic ( 29)
Are you being sarcastic? Because while England did receive a kind draw, you got an even kinder one.
ReplyDeleteEngland's loss to Belgium was a fluke. They were the better team the whole match and somehow lost. They beat Belgium 4-0 in the return match. They just swept Iceland and Azerbaijan aside in the other 4 matches, although the away match against Azerbaijan was competitive.
Norway acted more like I thought Belgium would. They outplayed England in the middle of the park in both games which surprised me, but England were just better in attack and defence and won both matches. Norway would be dangerous with good strikers. I wouldn't exactly fall out of my chair if they beat France in their playoff. They created loads of chances against England.
Do you want to tell me how Serbia did in their matches?
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DeleteAnd so the lineup is complete. In addition to England, Norway, and the hosting Israelis, Spain beat Denmark, Germany beat Switzerland, Netherlands beat Slovakia, Italy beat Sweden and Russia beat the Czech Republic.
DeleteSpain are still playing, but I think an 8-1 aggregate as it stands is safe to assume.
It should be a high quality tournament.
It says here:
Deletehttp://www.uefa.com/under21/news/newsid=1877343.html
"In the finals draw, the two top seeds will be hosts Israel (position A1) and the highest ranked team (B1) according to competition coefficient rankings as set out in the regulations. The sides ranked second and third are seeded and will allocated positions A2 and B2. The remaining four teams are not seeded and will be drawn into positions A3, B3, A4 and B4. UEFA will release a full list of seedings on Wednesday. The finals are played from 5 to 18 June."
So I guess that's...
Group A: Israel, England, 2 more
Group B: Spain, Netherlands, 2 more.
As far as I'm concerned Spain, you can keep that top seed spot. No.2 seed is where it's at! :)
So we could get:
Group A: Israel, England, Russia, Norway
Group B: Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Italy
Lorric, are you certain that the side ranked 2nd gets A2 and not A2 or B2?
DeleteFrom the actual regulations: "The teams ranked second and third are seeded and will be drawn into positions A2 and B2." From that it would seem to me that it would be uncertain which position Netherlands and England will get.
It doesn't say drawn, it says allocated.
DeleteLorric, what I copied was from what I believe is the official regulations release here: http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/competitions/Regulations/01/55/65/06/1556506_DOWNLOAD.pdf
DeleteI realize the press release says allocated.
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ReplyDeleteAny chance of an update at some point?
ReplyDeleteLost track of it :) Next week.
DeleteHere you go.
Delete