Danish Euro 2016 Qualifying Campaign Hits The Play-Offs

The Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign has been desperately disappointing for fans and players alike. Now with the draw for the play-off stage just ahead they face the prospect of not just a tough match, but a one in four possibility they’ll have to go head to head with their smug neighbor Sweden to secure a place in the Euro 2016 finals in France next year, a prospect they won’t relish whatsoever.

Danes Didn’t Deliver

• Third place and into the play-offs
• Ranked as unseeded
• Denmark might get Sweden as opponents

If you like to bet on sports in Denmark it would be understandable if the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign hasn’t exactly set your enthusiasm aflame. It had started well enough, the win at home against Armenia ending 2-1, but Albania then held them to a draw and Portugal beat them one-nil, it was all looking a bit less rosy than it should have. The 3-1 win over Serbia steadied nerves, and a 2-0 win against them the next summer meant things were looking up.

Unfortunately it is at this point that the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign began to turn sour, the second time round the Albanians stood firm and gained another goalless draw from the Danes, then worse the Armenians managed the same result, and that just left a game against the Portuguese which was never really going to end in the favor of the boys from up north if we’re honest about it. The one-nil score line driving the Danes down the table to third.

The Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign should have been done, over with, but instead the surprisingly cohesive Albanians had grabbed the second automatic qualification spot behind the Portuguese, a spot that the Danes could reasonably have predicted they would grab speeding their way to the finals in France. This leaves them now awaiting Sunday’s draw for the play-offs and, like their chums the Norwegians, hoping they don’t get Sweden.

Betting On The Play-Off Stages Of Euro 2016

Those of you that might take advantage of Danish gambling laws to wager on ComeOn! Sportsbook and the like should probably have a decent understanding of how this play-off stage works, because obviously since this is being organized by UEFA, who it now transpires is probably just FIFA’s prison bitch, it’s not as simple as merely taking all the eight third placed teams, drawing them out two at a time and having them play against each other, oh no, that would far too simple.

The Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign now faces the splitting of those eight teams into two groups. Four teams are “seeded” having the highest UEFA rankings, and the other four “unseeded”. The two groups of teams are then drawn against each other. The Danes would have been seeded, had the Turks not snuck an 89th minute winner against Iceland and Kazakhstan hadn’t beaten Latvia, but as it is they go into Sunday’s draw one of the unseeded teams.

In that respect the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign ranks the side along with the Republic of Ireland team, the Norwegians and Slovenia, and given of the four of them the Danes have won the fewest of their qualification games thus far they’ve probably little to complain about in that regard. The four teams seeded by UEFA one of whom the Danes will have to play their two legged play-off are Ukraine, Hungary, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the Swedes.

Danish Euro 2016 Qualifying Campaign May End Badly

Some fans have been there before…

To understand just how much the Danes do not wish to see the next step in the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign be a match against Sweden, you’ll probably have to be Danish, lest it be said that proximity does not equate to affinity and whilst the two nations have much in common the sporting rivalry between the two is alive and well, helped to no small degree by the bombastic Swedish press who are apt to be a little mercenary at the best of time and for Swedish football these aren’t.

They extolled Swedes to support Italy over Norway which seemed a tad unneighborly, especially as the reason given was that they’d prefer to face the Norwegians than the Croatians in the play-offs, likewise they’ve been as scornful of Denmark. Neither of the unseeded Scandinavian teams will want to meet the Swedes, the Danes are probably gambling news on Sunday is of the next phase of the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign being against Bosnia & Herzegovina, but then most unseeded teams will be.

Whomever they draw on Sunday they’ll have to wait till mid-November to play the two games and find out once and for all if the Danish Euro 2016 qualifying campaign will end in defeat or they will, after a hard fought battle, go into the Euro 2016 finals in France next year as one of the least favored teams. It’ll be a testing time for Danish football and Danish fans, but those neutral to national concerns might well hope they DO draw Sweden, because it’ll be a simply amazing pair of games.