World Cup '26 qualifiers discussion
- Thread starter Maradona37
- Start date
Fati_Future_BallonDor
Humble guy
Haaland also missed pen
ThwiX
Best midfielder around
Haaland with 11 goals in 6 games. The quality of these national teams in European qualifiers is embarrassing and what Penaldo built his NT goal record on. Hopefully Haaland can troll him and his petty fans in the future by following the same recipe and beat that misleading record.
DonAK
President of FC Barcelona
I need him at Barca with Lamine and Raphinha.
Fati_Future_BallonDor
Humble guy
Damn what a shot from CR7, left foot, 20m bro makes a power shot vs the post
Fati_Future_BallonDor
Humble guy
Spain 1-0
Turkey 1-1...
Turkey 1-1...
soul24rage
Senior Member
That foot save from Kelleher
BerkeleyBernie
Senior Member
Finally. Boring 10-man low block by Ireland vs Portugal broken in extra time.
Illuminator
Active member
some truth there, 36 year old Arnautovic made 4 goals against San Marino
Maradona37
Well-known member
Let's just say (and this is worst case scenario for Norway, other than the nightmare of not actually beating Estonia) that Norway beat Estonia 1-0 and Italy beat both Israel and Moldova 5-0 (I think realistically Norway will win by more and Italy will not rack up that many goals, but bear with me). That would put Norway's goal difference on +28 and Italy's on +17 - meaning Italy would need to beat Norway in the final game and there would have be a 12 goal swing i.e Italy winning by 6 clear goals. And this is the worst case scenario for Norway - assuming they win marginally and Italy rack up the goals in their final three games. They'd both finish on identical points - won 7 games and lose the away game to each other.
So, yeah, a win over Estonia by any margin and Norway are 99.99 percent qualified. They have already done the hard work building their goal difference. What @ThwiX has said is right - Haaland is like Ronaldo, a falt-track bully who beats up on poor teams in qualifiers, which is perfect when the tiebreaker is goal difference (though to be fair even if the tiebreaker was head to head, they beat Italy 3-0 in the home game).
Hence, beat Estonia, and we will be seeing Norway at their first World Cup since 1998.
So, yeah, a win over Estonia by any margin and Norway are 99.99 percent qualified. They have already done the hard work building their goal difference. What @ThwiX has said is right - Haaland is like Ronaldo, a falt-track bully who beats up on poor teams in qualifiers, which is perfect when the tiebreaker is goal difference (though to be fair even if the tiebreaker was head to head, they beat Italy 3-0 in the home game).
Hence, beat Estonia, and we will be seeing Norway at their first World Cup since 1998.
Maradona37
Well-known member
Also, due to the weird three game group format (used at World Cups in latter stages of the 70s and 80s), UAE only need a draw against Qatar on Tuesday to qualify. UAE came back to beat Oman in the last 15 minutes, otherwise it would have been Oman in a great position.
These are the group of teams who couldn't qualify in the original Asian groups.
Small groups like that show how things can swing radically. The bad news for the UAE is that the group is being hosted in Qatar, but Qatar already failed to beat Oman so there is hope.
In the other group, held in Saudi, it's going just how the Saudis want it - 0-0 between Iraq and Indonesia in the second half. Saudi already beat Indonesia so that would mean they'd just need a draw against Iraq on Tuesday to qualify.
Oh and the runners-up of the groups play-off to decide the Asian qualifier for the inter-confederation play-offs. It's very convoluted.
These are the group of teams who couldn't qualify in the original Asian groups.
Small groups like that show how things can swing radically. The bad news for the UAE is that the group is being hosted in Qatar, but Qatar already failed to beat Oman so there is hope.
In the other group, held in Saudi, it's going just how the Saudis want it - 0-0 between Iraq and Indonesia in the second half. Saudi already beat Indonesia so that would mean they'd just need a draw against Iraq on Tuesday to qualify.
Oh and the runners-up of the groups play-off to decide the Asian qualifier for the inter-confederation play-offs. It's very convoluted.
Maradona37
Well-known member
There's no way at all they will qualify from this group automatically if Norway beat Estonia, as I detailed. Surely the goal difference is far too much. Can you see the Italians putting 10 past Moldova and 7 past Israel? That's what they need to do, and hope Norway struggle to beat Estonia, and even then italy needs a handsome win in the last game against the Norwegians.
Their only real hope of automatic qualification is Norway not beating Estonia. The goal difference of Norway is too much of an advantage.
The play-offs are very down to luck. It's amazing to say but we could see Italy fail to qualify for a third consecutive time.
In a way they had the worst of both worlds - they tried to qualify for the NL Finals and failed (which isn't even an important tournament) and due to that they were playing catch up already in this group as Norway played 2 games before Italy played one. Norway were on 6 points with goal difference of +7 when Italy travelled to Norway for their first game, which meant lots of pressure and a psychological disadvantage. italy lost 3-0.
In a way the schedule has totally fucked them - allowed Norway to get a head start AND threw Italy in with their hardest game on the group in the first game.
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