ANZ 2023 Qualifying

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Pots are out for UEFA Qualfiying for the 2023 Women's World Cup. No pre-qualifying this time around and the number of entrants is up to 51 from 46 last time around

Pot 1: Netherlands, Germany, England, France, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Italy, Denmark
Pot 2: Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Scotland, Russia, Finland, Portugal, Wales
Pot 3: Czech Republic, Ukraine, Republic of Ireland, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland
Pot 4: Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Croatia, Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Israel, Azerbaijan
Pot 5: Turkey, Malta, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Latvia
Pot 6: Montenegro, Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg, Armenia, Bulgaria

The real excitement is that there's an interconfederation playoff.

The nine teams that finish runner up in their groups compete for 2.3 spaces: the nine will be whittled down to 3 - the two which perform best across the group and the playoffs qualify directly for the World Cup and the third needs to participate in a ten team interconfederation playoff to allocate the final three spots.

[Nesta]

Might as well throw in that the draw for the Olympic tournament has been made.

Group E: Japan, Canada, GBR, Chile

Group F: China, Brazil, Zambia, Netherlands

Group G: Sweden, USA, Australia, New Zealand

Looks like GBR and Chile will get the whole games underway as the first kick off on 21st July. [EDIT- or not, as it turns out the Softball preliminary between Japan and Australia starts at 9am that day]

[CY_Boaby]

That's a real tough Group G the Matildas find themselves in.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Groups are out for UEFA Qualifying:

https://twitter.com/GirlsontheBall/s...03395966431236

Wales have France, Slovenia, Greece, Kazakhstan and Estonia. I'm relatively happy with that - France and Slovenia aren't the worst teams in their respective pots but they're not the best either, and only one game is really hard to get to unless we choose to play another qualifier in Haverfordwest.

[elguapo4]

Like Wales, Ireland can be reasonably happy. Sweden are strong but not the strongest, and we'd fancy our chances against Finland, Slovakia as the fourth seeds are the fly in the ointment, but if we can take maximum points from them, we'd expect them to do damage to our rivals.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

France are obviously in a different league to Wales and anything we pick up against them will be a bonus. I suspect second place is going to come down to a straight fight against Slovenia who are not a bad side but are a side we should be beating, at least over two legs.

It's a harder draw than we got for the Euros and we didn't make it out of that group, mind.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Leicester City's Hannah Cain makes the switches from England (back) to Wales and will re-unite with her former England U19s manager Gemma Grainger and is named in Wales' squad to face Kazakhstan next week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/58491857

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Some good goals in Wales emphatic rout of Kazakhstan with a 6 - 0 win. Gemma Evans and Ceri Holland getting their first international goals which is nice to see.

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Striking results so far:

Czechia drawing with Netherlands Switzerland and Italy's relatively narrow (3 goal) victories over the Lithuania and Moldova
France sticking 10 (ten) past Greece. There are two worse teams than Greece in their group

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Also interesting: second seeds Portugal drew at home to Turkey - seeded fifth. And, less of a shock, but second seed Belgium dropped points against third seed Poland.

Given cross group records will be compared at the playoff stage that's good news for other second seeds.

[CY_Boaby]

I caught some of Scotland's 2-0 win over Hungary. Towards the end Scotland created loads of chances which they failed to convert, including Claire Emslie missing an open goal. Be bloody typical if we miss out on qualifying by one goal.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Saw Kim Little has retired as an international player which makes me think there's something not quite right in the Scottish set up at the moment?

[CY_Boaby]

My knowledge of the Scotland team isn't that great but the retirement of Kim Little did come as a bit of a shock, considering she's only 31 and still has a hell of a lot to give. Because I live in Australia I'm desperate for Scotland to qualify for this World Cup, so I really hope there aren't rumblings going on in the background that's going to blow up in our faces.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

It's hard to know precisely what's going on - the most obvious one is she's a player who's recovered from a horrible long-term injury and knows another would likely be career ending and wants to focus on the football that actually pays her bills (I don't think Scottish players at professional clubs receive any significant funding for playing international football).

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

A selection of matches to look out for tonight (pots in brackets):

Netherlands (pot 1) v Iceland (pot 2)
The top seeds don't often play each other at this stage of qualifying, and the reigning European champions and World Cup finalists, having lost their manager to England, have made a shaky start under new head coach Mark Parsons (also still the manager of Portland Thorns in the NWSL until the end of the season), drawing with Czechia. Iceland will fancy their chances.

Finland (pot 2) v Slovakia (pot 4)
Finland have failed to win their last three (friendly) matches - though they finished their Euro 2021 qualifying strongly. Slovakia narrowly lost to Olympic finalists Sweden last week, so will possibly fancy their chances at getting a result.

Greece (pot 4) v Kazakhstan (pot 5)
On Friday, were Greece that bad or were France that good. Find out tonight I guess. Both teams had heavy defeats in their last outing and will be looking to get some points on the board.

Romania (pot 3) v Lithuania (pot 6)
Lithuania had a pretty respectable result against Switzerland considering they have the fifth worst coefficient of any entrant (third worst of any team that's played enough games to have a coefficient at all). Can they repeat the performance against Romania?

Germany v Serbia has kicked off and seen Serbia take a third minute lead so I guess watch out for that too?

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Germany being run ragged by a sixteen year old as far as I can tell...

Watching now and Matejic is a properly good footballer from what I've seen. The goal was incredibly well taken.

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1 - 1 in the Germany Serbia game after a defensive mix-up from Serbia.

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3 - 1 Germany now with 20 to go. Hard to see a way back for Serbia. Good game though.

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5 - 1 Germany and we're into stoppage time. Unlucky Serbia.

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Weird game for Wales - scored in the fourth minute with Estonia looking chaotic, then Estonia just shut up shop and kept them out for the remaining 86 minutes. Good defensive performance from them, frustrating for Wales, but then we get the 3 points.

France are currently drawing with Slovenia in the same group but I expect they'll have too much for them.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

France needed a last minute penalty to beat Slovenia, after Slovenia equalised on 88 minutes. Nearly a superb and unexpected result for them especially since Wales struggled so much in Parnu. They'll be brimming with confidence when they host Wales next month.

[Sporting]

So who's nailed on for direct qualification?

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Germany are probably best placed - they've won their opening two games and the second and third seeds have already dropped points.
By similar logic Norway are really well placed.

Other than that, the only other group where the second seed have dropped points is Netherlands' group - but they've also dropped points to Czechia - so it could may be a three horse race.

France, England and Spain will probably win their groups - Austria, in England's group, look the biggest threat to that. The most open groups are probably group G with Switzerland and Italy both starting with a perfect record (and Romania too who could throw a spanner in the works of one or other team but probably won't win the group).

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Asian Cup qualifiers going on at the moment (which is in itself the world cup qualifiers). Iran, South Korea, Thailand and Philippines have qualified for the finals.

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Next round of UEFA Qualifiers are taking place over the next week. The biggest game tonight is probably Ireland v Sweden with Ireland hoping to build on an impressive friendly win over Australia.

Tomorrow Slovenia host Wales in a match that will help to decide who finishes second in that group. Slovenia are possibly the group's surprise package, being minutes from a point in France so they can feel confident going into the game against the group's second seeds.