After colorful stages, Finland made it to the second draw basket of the European Football Championship qualifiers.
Finland the men’s national football team made its way to the best group second place in the Nations League B-League, when the last matches played on Tuesday ended favorably for Huuhkajie.
The second place puts Finland in the second draw of the European Championship, which means that in the future European Championship qualifiers, there will be only one tougher team in the same group as Finland.
In addition to own successes, Finland’s survival as the best group runner-up requires quite a bit of luck.
If looking directly at the points of the four groups, Finland is only the third best group winner with eight points. Ukraine has 11 points and Norway has 10. Only Iceland is behind with four points.
The reason for Finland’s rise in the comparison of the second group, past Ukraine and Norway, is that Russia was thrown out of the competition because of the war of aggression it started. Thus, only Israel, Iceland and Albania played in group 3, and the results of the matches played against the group jumbo were dropped from the comparison of group two.
Finland received only one point from Romania, which remained in the group jumbo, which made it the best group runner-up in the comparison. Actually Huuhkajat was not the best runner-up. It just lost points to the right opponent.
Even in the last round, Huuhkajie’s position as the best group second required suitable results, and they were obtained when Ireland kept Armenia in check, and Sweden failed to beat Slovenia.
Still in the opening round, Sweden defeated Slovenia 2–0 away from home, but at home the result was 1–1 Benjamin Šeško after scoring a dream goal in the Swedish net.
Although Huuhkaj had a rare good luck on the way to the best group second place, the ranking is still not a guarantee of anything.
The group draw for the European Championship qualifiers will take place on October 9, and as usual, there will be a dream and nightmare group and a lot in between.
In the dream group, in addition to Finland, for example Hungary, Armenia, the Faroe Islands and Gibraltar could play, while in the nightmare group, for example, Spain, Ukraine, Turkey and Slovakia would face each other.
Neither of these will likely come true, but in terms of reaching the European Championship place, it would be desirable for the draw result to be closer to a dream than a nightmare.
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