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Playoffs for the EM 2020: DFB team meets Iceland, Romania, Bulgaria or Hungary - or not

2019-11-22T12:17:10.771Z


On 30 November, the groups will be drawn for the European Championship in 2020. In advance, the Uefa has now set the playoff pairings. In addition, hosts Denmark are happy about three home games.



The European Football Association (Uefa) has set the playoff pairings for the European Championship 2020 in a preliminary draw. The total of 16 teams will play in four different paths the last four European Championship participants. The nominally strongest team Iceland will face Romania in the semi-finals and would have to travel to Bulgaria in a final to win the match between Bulgaria and Hungary. The semi-finals will take place on the 26th of March next year with no return leg, five days later the finals will be played. The other 20 starting places had been played in the European Championship qualification.

The playoff pairings at a glance:

Path A (ends up in EM group F or C):
Iceland - Romania
Bulgaria - Hungary
The winner of the 2nd semifinals has home right in the final

Path B (lands in EM Group E):
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Northern Ireland
Slovakia - Ireland
Winner of the 1st semifinal will have home right in the final

Path C (lands in EM Group D):
Scotland - Israel
Norway - Serbia
The winner of the 2nd semifinals has home right in the final

Path D (lands in EM group C or F):
Georgia - Belarus
North Macedonia - Kosovo
Winner of the 1st semifinal will have home right in the final

With Romania and Hungary, two European Championship hosts have been placed in playoff path A. This fact had given rise to discussions in the run-up, because the Uefa had guaranteed all hosts home-rule in at least two European Championship games and the four paths could not be easily assigned to the respective groups. The dilemma had been resolved by the association by pairing the path with two hosts (A) with the one without host (D).

In practice, this now looks like that for the time being the playoff path A lands in the German group D. This can lead to problems if Romania should win this path because Bucharest is the host city of the group C. In this case, the path will be swapped, then the winner of the path D would land in the German group. Then the possible German opponents would be Georgia, Belarus, North Macedonia or Kosovo.

It was also drawn that in EM Group B with the two hosts Russia and Denmark, the team from Scandinavia will play three home games in Copenhagen. Russia will have two home games in St Petersburg, but will have to travel to Copenhagen for the third group match. In all other groups it was already clear which nation will have three home games as the second host could not qualify directly. Germany will play three times in Munich in the European Championship preliminary round.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2019-11-22

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