Today, the last European representatives of the upcoming World Cup will be announced.
12 teams have already secured their participation in the World Cup. These are Germany, Spain, England, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Norway, Scotland and Switzerland. And now the final play-offs are ahead, which will determine the last four participants from the Old Continent.
We will follow the clash between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy in Zenica with the greatest interest. "Squadra Azzurri" enters this match not just as a favorite, but as a team haunted by the demons of the past. After missing the last two World Cups, the Italians face an unprecedented risk in their history of a third consecutive failure, which would be a sporting tragedy on a global scale. The Italians often stumble precisely in such moments of peak tension, and the Bosnians see this as their greatest chance to write their names in the golden history of Balkan football and reach their second participation in the world finals after 2014. Additional tension was created by the clip that appeared on the Internet, which shows Italian players rejoicing at the fact that they will meet Bosnia in this playoff, which stirred up the spirits in the Balkan country and further inspired the hosts to punish the arrogant Italians. The winner of this match will fall into group "B" at the World Cup, where the teams of Canada, Qatar and Switzerland are.
The match between Sweden and Poland is no less intriguing. This is the match of truth for Robert Lewandowski, who at the end of his career wants to prove that he can be a leader at the most decisive moment and get to his last major championship. An interesting detail is that Sweden has a marked superiority in direct matches this century, but the Poles enter the match with the psychological advantage of a team that has recently won its most important play-offs, one of which was against Sweden for the championship in Qatar 2022, when the "Polish team" won 2:0. For the "three kronor" another absence from a major forum would be a heavy blow to their new generation of talents, which still wants to prove itself among the world elite. However, history is on the Scandinavians' side, as Poland has not won in Sweden for 96 years. The winner of this play-off will go to Group "E" of the World Cup with the Netherlands, Japan and Tunisia.
Pristina will be the epicenter of emotions for the match between Kosovo and Turkey, where much more is at stake than just qualifying. For the young Kosovo state, this is a chance for its first historic World Cup, which turns the match into a national holiday even before the first referee's signal. Turkey, for its part, carries the heavy burden of a team that does not always cope well with the role of a guest in “hot” Balkan points. After all, the guests are the favorite in the clash and a possible failure would be taken quite hard in our southern neighbor. The winner of this match will fall into Group "C" at the World Finals with the teams of the USA, Paraguay and Australia.
In Prague, the Czech Republic and Denmark will face each other in the last play-off. The two teams are old acquaintances and have scores to settle. In the last five clashes between them, the advantage is for the "red dynamite", which has 2 wins, and the other three matches ended in a draw. The Danes' greatest success was in the quarter-finals of Euro 2020, when they won 2:1 and eliminated the Czechs from the competition. Statistics show that matches between these two teams are almost always low-scoring and are decided by a single detail or mistake. It is curious that the Czech Republic has not participated in the World Cup for exactly 20 years (2006), which makes their hunger for victory in front of their home audience extremely great. Denmark's last World Cup was in Qatar 2022. Whoever wins this play-off will be in Group "A" of the World Cup with Mexico, South Africa and South Korea.