Euro 2024 qualifying: England and Italy to lock horns

Oladipupo Mojeed Sports 09/10/2022

England will be playing against Italy again after being drawn in the same group of Euro 2024 qualifiers.

Italy had defeated the Three Lions in the Euro 2020 final and in their last meeting: the UEFA Nations League.

Germany will be hosting Euro 2024. The European finalist will also face Ukraine, North Macedonia and Malta in Group C.

Meanwhile, Scotland will face Spain, Norway, Georgia and Cyprus in group A.

The Group D contains Wales, Croatia, Armenia, Turkey and Latvia. Northern Ireland are joined by Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Kazakhstan and San Marino in Group H.

The Republic of Ireland face a tough task as they are in Group B alongside the Netherlands and France, plus Greece and Gibraltar.

At the draw in Frankfurt, there were gasps when England were pulled out to face Italy, with the Azzurri having beaten Gareth Southgate’s side on penalties at Wembley to win the Euro 2020 final.

Italy will have an opportunity to take a revenge against North Macedonia who beat them to the 2022 World Cup ticket after losing 1-0 in the play-off in March.

Italy had denied England their first European Championship when they lost on penalties.

Reacting to the draw, England manager, Gareth Southgate described it as ironic.

“It’s ironic when you’ve had a fixture like we’ve had and then played them again already again so recently that you seem to have these sort of things.

“We seemed to be playing Croatia every five minutes not so long ago and now its seems we have got that situation with Italy.”

No easy match – Mancini

In his reaction, Roberto Manci said he knew the Azurri would be drawn against either England or France.

“That’s OK. It’s a decent five-team group, no easy matches, all ones we can have a go at.”

England will be playing Ukraine again, having defeated 4-0 at Euro 2020.

“We know the quality of a lot of [Ukraine’s] players. We had a good result against them at Euro 2020 but the scoreline did not reflect the quality of their team. They will be difficult games,” added the England boss.

Russia sanction continue

Meanwhile, UEFA didn’t include Russia in the draw as they are banned from Euro 2024 qualification following their invasion of Ukraine.

Having qualified for the last edition, Scotland are guaranteed at least a play-off place after finishing top of their Nations League group and earning promotion to the top tier of that competition. But manager Steve Clarke wants to avoid having to follow that route.

“We want to qualify as of right. We don’t want to rely on the play-offs. We qualified for the last Euros via the play-offs but we missed out on the World Cup through the play-offs, so we know they’re fraught with danger.

“We’d much rather be in a position where we qualify as of right from the group, so that’s what we’re concentrating on,” he added.

How teams can qualify for the Euro 2024 championship

There are seven groups with five countries and three groups with six teams in them. The four Nations League finalists – Croatia, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain – have gone into the smaller groups.

The top two teams in each of the 10 groups qualify directly for Euro 2024.

Germany automatically qualify as hosts, while the remaining three teams will come via the Nations League play-offs.

The groups start on 23 March and end on 21 November 2023.