16 clubs wrestle for 4 remaining seats in the European Cup play-offs

The competition to qualify for the European Football Cup 2020 returns to rotation again Thursday, with the start of the semi-finals of the qualifying supplement to the competition that was postponed for a year due to the repercussions of the new Corona virus.

The spread of "Covid-19" has disrupted sports life around the world, including football, prompting the Confederation (Wifa) to postpone the tournament scheduled in 12 European cities between June 12 and July 12 last year for a full year to 2021. 16 teams are competing. Four vacant seats, after 20 teams qualified (champions and runners-up to ten groups) through the primary qualifiers.

The remaining four teams will be decided through the play-offs, at the end of which the champions of each of the four levels will move to the continental championship.

The 16 teams that did not qualify through the basic qualifiers are competing through the play-offs, according to their ranking in the first edition of the European Nations League competition (2018-2019).

As in the newly created European Championship, the participating teams were divided into four levels.

Each level includes four teams competing in a mini-championship, consisting of a semi-final and a final, from one match to determine the name of the qualifier.

The team with the best classification in every level at home will play the team that ranked fourth in the classification, while the third-place player is a guest of the ranked second.

The four final matches will be held on November 12th.

Iceland did not succeed in securing a place in the European Cup through the qualifiers, as it finished third in Group H, behind France and Turkey.

And what prompted the aspiring team to participate in the second continental tournament, who performed distinctly in the 2016 European Cup in France, to be in the advanced rank despite not obtaining any point in the Nations League in its first edition, is that all first-level teams qualified through the qualifiers.

The confrontation with Romania within the first-level supplement will not be easy despite the fact that the match is held at home, especially after he appeared in a retreat during the two matches he fought last September in the Nations League in its new version 0-1 and 1-5 against England and Belgium, respectively.

The Romanian national team is armed with more tournament experience than its host and has not missed the European Cup in the last six editions.

At the same level, Bulgaria will face a great challenge during its hosting of Hungary in the second semi-finals, especially as it aspires to return to the European competition for the first time since 2004. On the other hand, Hungary returned to the limelight again in the 2016 edition after a long absence from international tournaments and succeeded at that time at the top of a group that included Portugal, which She won the title, in addition to Iceland and Austria.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina team is seeking its first appearance in the European Cup since the republic’s secession from the former Yugoslavia, through a meeting that will bring it together with Northern Ireland.

The national team is counting on a group of its prominent players as its scorer, the Italian star of Roma, Eden Dzeko, and the newly transferred midfielder from Juventus to Barcelona, ​​Spain's Miralem Pjanic, and in the second match, Slovakia will play a difficult match with the Republic of Ireland.

Norway relies heavily on its young star Erling Haaland in the second qualifying battle for the European Cup since 2000, when it hosts powerful Serbia seeking its first participation in the European competition.

On the other hand, the Serbian national team is full of big names such as Real Madrid striker Luka Jovic, Italian Fiorentina player Sergey Milinkovic Savic and defense captain Alexander Kolarov, who moved to Inter Milan at the beginning of the season.

The supplement will be an occasion for the fans to return to the stadiums again, after the President of the Slovenian European Union Alexander Ceferin announced last week that fans would be allowed to attend the "Playoff" matches, if the local authorities allowed them to do so, provided that the number does not exceed 30 percent of the total capacity of the stadium. .

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