The only good news is that Croatia have pissed off and Hungary are seeded.
But Tuesday night’s results did not go Ireland’s way and, unless there’s some sort of miraculous shift in the next UEFA rankings update, Martin O’Neill’s men won’t be seeded for a play-off game to make Euro 2016.
Coming into the final group games on the final day, we knew that the Republic required a set of very special and specific outcomes from the last three pools and, whilst some of them came off, it looks like we’ve fallen just short of making the top seeded brack.
Turkey winning and Latvia losing means Turkey qualify as best third-place team. That means Hungary are in the top bracket.
The third-place teams are as follows:
- Turkey (qualified)
- Ukraine
- Hungary
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Sweden
- Denmark
- Ireland
- Norway
- Slovenia
Croatia beat Malta and Norway lost to Italy so they have swapped places.
But for Ireland to have been seeded, we also needed Bosnia to lose to Cyprus and Turkey couldn’t have gone through automatically (we’re two places off the seeded positions, they would’ve pushed us up).
As it is, Ireland are not seeded and they will face a seeded side in the play-offs in November (first leg 12-14 November) and our opponents will be either:
- Ukraine
- Hungary
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Sweden
The draw takes place on Sunday at 10.15am.
