International qualifiers: 10 talking points from the week’s action

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/sep/10/football-international-week-talking-points

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Uefa have hamstrung their own tournament

So that’s it then. After one match England have as good as qualified for Euro 2016. Their opening fixture was always likely to be the sternest test of a group comprising Switzerland, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and San Marino and by comfortably beating Switzerland, Roy Hodgson’s side passed it with flying colours, buying their manager some much-needed wriggle-room after their feeble showing in Brazil.

With the top two sides due to qualify automatically from Group E and the third-placed side entering a play-off (although they could qualify automatically, too), it is utterly inconceivable that England will fail to go through against such feeble opposition. Of course while fans of the team ought to be pleased that their squad has secured such straightforward passage to Michel Platini’s bloated new 24-team tournament, something resembling a bit of white-knuckle tension along the way wouldn’t go amiss.

Forthcoming qualifiers against San Marino (h), Estonia (a), Slovenia (h) and Lithuania (h) are unlikely to set too many pulses racing, even among the players, for whom extreme complacency is likely to be the only stumbling block as they canter to qualification in what should be a series of routine wins. They won’t improve much, their paying public will be bored and once they get to France, the tournament’s new format means they could qualify from whatever group they’re in without winning a game. At some point these Euros will spark into life – but it’s unlikely to happen until late June 2016. Well done, Uefa. Well done. BG

Aiden McGeady comes of age for Ireland

Despite his 70 appearances in an Ireland shirt, Irish football fans had never particularly warmed to Aiden McGeady before last weekend’s heroics. The fact that he was born and reared in Scotland has absolutely nothing to do with it – as Ray Houghton remains a much-loved national treasure in his adopted football homeland, despite being as Scottish as Lough Ness, a Burns supper and that kilt-wearing piper on the shortbread tin.

It’s McGeady’s frustrating lack of consistency and goals that have prevented the Irish from clasping him to the collective bosom, while his long spell off the British and Irish football radar as a player for Spartak Moscow probably didn’t help either: out of sight, out of mind. Before Sunday’s somewhat fortuitous win against Georgia, McGeady had scored only three goals in 69 appearances his country and was happy to concede that this dearth of goals was a major source of personal concern. Having featured in all three of Everton’s Premier League matches this season and netted a sensational opening-day purler against Leicester, the 28-year-old came into Ireland’s opening Euro qualifier in fine form and scored two goals, including one beauty borne from the trademark McGeady Spin, to win all three points. In one of very few tricky qualification groups that Germany should win doing cartwheels, one of Poland, Scotland and the Irish will suffer the ignominy of not even making it to a play-off for Euro 2016. Similarly helpful interventions from McGeady ought to ensure that it isn’t Martin O’Neill’s players who are left with heads hanging in shame. BG

Spain secure services of Barça’s latest prodigy

At the age of 19, after only two starts and 125 competitive minutes for Barcelona and having played 90 senior minutes on only three occasions, all of them for Barcelona’s second side in Spain’s Segunda División last season (all three games were in May, and Barcelona lost two of them), Munir El Haddadi made his debut for Spain in the 5-1 thrashing of Macedonia, replacing Koke in the 77th minute.

To an extent this may have been a pragmatic move by Spain, securing for life the services of a promising youngster who might otherwise have chosen to represent Morocco, where his father was born (a procedure that is generally known as “CarlJenkinsoning”). Asked after the game the player insisted he never intended to represent any other country – “Since I was young I have played in Spain and this was my idea. I spoke with people in Morocco and told them that I wanted to play here instead” – but he could hardly be expected to express uncertainty in the circumstances.

His father, an initially illegal immigrant who crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in a fishing boat aged 18 in search of a better life (he eventually became a chef and met Munir’s mother at work, where she washed the dishes), suggested that there had been considerable doubt. “My son said to me, ‘Father I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” Mohammed El Haddadi told Radio Onda Cero. “I told him to go with whoever calls you first. Spain called first and he went with them. If Morocco had called he would also have gone there. I’ve always said to him it is whoever opens the door first.”

Before this week however Morocco hadn’t so much opened the door as removed the entire wall of the house, going so far as to send Mohamed Ouzzine, their minister of sport, on a diplomatic mission to Barcelona last month to meet the player and his family (Mohammed apparently promised that his son was committed to the Atlas Lions). The skirmish is over, and Munir’s international future is no longer in doubt. Only time will tell whether he was right to choose the 2010 World Cup champions and 2008 and 2012 double European Championship winners over rival suitors who last appeared at a World Cup when he was two. SB

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is untouchable

And in more ways than one, it seems. Fortunate to avoid celebrating his 100th appearance for Sweden with a red card for what looked suspiciously like an premeditated elbow on Austria’s David Alaba during the 1-1 draw played out between the two nations, the striker also looked less than impressed with striker Rubin Okotie’s meek attempts to lay hands on him while on defensive duties at a set piece. The Swede’s contempt-tinged look of puzzled surprise spoke volumes. In a nutshell: you just don’t touch the Zlatan. BG

A lot done, more to do for Scotland

Having identified and successfully attacked Germany’s Erik Durm- and Sebastian Rudy-shaped weaknesses in the full-back positions, Gordon Strachan felt a mite aggrieved that his side did not leave Dortmund with a point few who watched the game would have begrudged them. After a ropey opening 20 minutes, the Scots acquitted themselves very well and their long-suffering fans have every right to genuinely fancy their chances of pipping the Republic of Ireland and Poland to automatic qualification from Group D.

There is no disgrace in a narrow defeat away from home to the World Champions and prior to last weekend, Scotland had notched up some impressive results during Strachan’s brief reign, beating Croatia at home and away in World Cup qualifying, as well as defeating Lithuania away. Sunday night’s loss ended a six-match unbeaten run, albeit one where four of the games played were meaningless end-of-season friendlies.

“I actually could’ve picked another team and it would’ve given us the same performance,” said Strachan afterwards. “That’s how good our squad is getting.” While it is not uncommon for Scotland to raise their game for matches against top-quality opposition such as Germany, it is their performances against Poland and Ireland that will reveal how far they’ve come and how much further there is to go. BG

Kyle Lafferty finally steps up

In a week in which all five home nations gave good accounts of themselves (confession time: this bit was written before Wales played Andorra but we’re guessing they didn’t mess that up), perhaps the best result was Northern Ireland’s 2-1 win against Hungary in Budapest, their first victory away from home in four years. An infuriating player who it seems is blessed with all the attributes of the stereotypical footballer apart from the ability to play football, Kyle Lafferty was the star turn, setting up one goal and scrambling home a second to seal his country’s come-from-behind 2-1 win in the final nine minutes. As scores go it is unlikely to live long in the memory of anyone apart from the Norwich City striker but his delight upon securing three points for his team was obvious in the wake of a difficult year.

Released by Palermo in June and described by the club president, Maurizio Zamparini, as “an out-of-control womaniser” with a fondness for going on “the hunt for women in Milan”, Lafferty was actually popular among Palermo fans and scored 11 goals in 34 Serie B matches as the club won promotion. Having been criticised for a lack of maturity on and off the field since his days at Rangers, Lafferty has yet to score for Norwich City this season, where manager Neil Adams appears to have marooned him out on the wing. However, his match-winning performance for Northern Ireland as an old fashioned, bustling centre-forward demonstrated where his talents lie.

“We needed someone to step up and Laff did that for us, I’m delighted for him,” said Northern Ireland manager O’Neill. “For the first goal he made a great run, a great piece of play. We needed something big to open the game up and Lafferty gave us that. Then he finds the winner as well. He gave us great energy all night but he needed that goal, he really did. When he’s focused and he’s right on it he’s an asset to any team and he showed that here.”

Northern Ireland will struggle to qualify from a group containing Greece, Romania and Finland, but far stranger things have happened. A fit, in-form and focused “Irishman without rules” (© Maurizio Zamparini) firing on all cylinders could make all the difference to their cause. BG

Luxembourg’s hot streak

Other than Russia (who had 31 goal attempts in their 4-0 home win over Liechtenstein and still needed their opponents to score the first two goals for them – “We should have taken our chances,” admitted the midfielder Aleksandr Samedov, “but we were helped by the fact they took our chances for us”, no team in Europe had more chances than Belarus. Even Poland, who scored seven without reply in their Sunday stroll in Gibraltar, couldn’t better the Belarusians when it comes to goal attempts.

In all, Georgi Kondratiev’s side mustered 29 efforts and the really galling thing is that they only scored one, and ended up drawing with Luxembourg, needing a 78th-minute equaliser even to get that. Equally painfully, of all the missed chances many thought that David Turpel or Mathias Jänisch came the closest to goal – and they’re both Luxembourgeois. “We should have scored more goals with all the opportunities that we created,” said Luc Holtz, the Luxembourg manager (which was rubbing it in a bit).

The result (as well as the fact that May’s 5-1 friendly defeat by Belgium was later declared void because there had been too many substitutions) means that Luxembourg are now unbeaten in three official Fifa-sanctioned matches, having also drawn against Cape Verde Islands and Italy. The last time that happened was in September 1995, when the third match in the series was, coincidentally, a home draw against Belarus.

They’re still a couple of games short of their all-time record hot streak, a five-match unbeaten run between 1961 and 1963 that included a 4-2 win over Portugal – Eusebio and all – a 2-1 away victory over Holland and home and away draws against the Danes that took them to the very verge of qualification for the 1964 European Championship (they eventually lost 1-0 to Denmark in a winner-takes-all neutral-venue replay, played in Amsterdam).

Portuguese patience is wearing thin

Following their fairly dismal showing in Brazil (P3 W1 D1 L1), Portugal got their qualification campaign for Euro 2016 off to the worst possible start, losing at home to Albania. Despite having to line up without Ronaldo, Portugal ought to have had more than enough about them to put their visitors away and their supporters are increasingly concerned that their prime asset, one of the greatest players in the world, is being wasted under the stewardship of Paulo Bento.

The Portugal manager’s strange team selections and apparently blind loyalty to certain favoured players such as Ricardo Costa, Miguel Veloso and Raul Meireles have long been a source of irritation in Portugal. Squandering the Ronaldo years as the player approaches his 30th birthday, through the use of antiquated tactics and past-their-prime personnel as his team-mates, would be little short of scandalous. Portugal fans were understandably vocal in their criticism of Bento in the immediate aftermath of this upset and while their team should still qualify for what could be Ronaldo’s last major international tournament, it seems unlikely they will do so with their current manager in charge. BG

Andorrans famous for frustration

The manner of Wales’s win in Andorra might not have been enormously encouraging but it is not as if they are alone in finding the part-timers of the principality surprisingly hard to break down. The game brought back not enormously welcome memories of England’s two trips to the principality, both of which saw the visitors grow frustrated (they were goalless at half-time) before eventually prevailing, and going on to qualify for whatever it was they were trying to qualify for (it doesn’t just happen to the British – when the Dutch visited last September needing a win to secure qualification for the Brazil World Cup they toiled until the 50th minute, scored twice in short order and then continued to struggle for the rest of the game).

Other than a reminder of Gareth Bale’s priceless qualities, the real encouragement for the Welsh last night came in Zenica where Bosnia and Herzegovina – the team Wales will most likely have to pip to second place behind presumed group winners Belgium if they are to qualify without recourse to a play-off – slipped to defeat to Cyprus. Both those sides must visit Cardiff next month, after which the picture might start to become a little clearer. SB

Meanwhile in Africa ...

Qualification for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations continued with another 14 fixtures. The 30th edition of the tournament will be played from 17 January through to 8 February in Morocco next year, which ought to prompt the usual chorus of moaning from assorted managers who’d either forgotten about or were completely unaware of it, when they signed players who were likely to be competing. Everton fans will be pleased to hear that Samuel Eto’o has once again announced his retirement from the Cameroon squad, although history suggests he may very well review his decision if they qualify. BG