France and the Netherlands will likely fall into the “death” bracket in the 1/8 round while the unconvincing England team is still lucky.
The series of matches on the night of June 25 has determined more teams entering the 1/8 round of EURO, bringing the total number of teams participating in the knockout round to 11 teams. There are only 5 remaining spots waiting to be determined this evening, June 26.
The French team soon won the right to continue, but they needed first place in the group to “avoid” the semi-finals, considered “death”. Coach Deschamps and his team have a huge advantage when only facing Poland and they will definitely be eliminated. However, “Gaulois Cock” once again disappointed. They only got 1 goal from the penalty spot and also conceded from the penalty spot.
The situation is similar to France and the Netherlands. Koeman’s army wanted to be at the top of the table, but they played very poorly when they met the Austrian team. The famous defense of Van Dijk and De Vrij had to concede 3 goals while the attack only brought in 2 goals.
With France being held to a draw, Austria became the top team in Group C, France ranked second while the Netherlands continued as one of the four third-placed teams with the best performance. This result means that France will share the quarterfinals with Portugal and the semis with Germany and Spain.
If Hungary cannot pass the group stage, the Netherlands will also fall into this first bracket and their next opponent will be Portugal. In case Hungary “squeezes through the narrow gap”, the Netherlands may have to face England.
In Group D, England entered the final match as the leading team. Their opponent, Slovenia, needs at least 1 point to advance. Therefore, this team was doomed from the beginning. England was not too interested in attacking, so the match ended 0-0.
It’s a chance for either Denmark or Serbia to move up the rankings if either team wins. However, these two teams also presented a calculated match because neither team wanted to lose. This match also ended without any goals scored.
With this result, England won first place in Group C, thereby avoiding the “branch of death”. Meanwhile, the 2nd position of the group is quite interesting: Denmark and Slovenia are equal in points, difference, number of goals scored, head-to-head record, and also equal in yellow cards.
According to Article 23 of the UEFA regulations, if the five criteria for determining two teams tied on points do not yield a result, the overall ranking of the EURO qualifiers will be used. According to the rankings there, Denmark ranked 9th while Slovenia ranked 15th, so Denmark ranked 2nd, and Slovenia ranked 3rd.
This means that Denmark will meet host Germany in the next round. Meanwhile, Slovenia has officially sent Croatia home. That was predicted when Luka Modric and his teammates only got 2 points/3 matches. Hungary will still have to wait for the results of Group F. They can advance if the Czech Republic and Georgia do not win in the final match.