Scotland’s potential World Cup play-off opponents were revealed, including Zlatan’s Sweden and Wales with seeding in balance
SCOTLAND’s World Cup play-off road is becoming clearer – with Steve Clarke’s men still hoping for a World Cup semi-final settlement in Hampden, they have now secured second place in Group F.
Steve Clarke’s team secured second place after winning a professional 2-0 win against Moldova in Chisinau on Friday night.
And that means the playoffs, even though there is still a lot of work to be done to take Clarke’s men to Qatar.
The ten runners-up from the qualifying groups will be joined by two group winners from the Nations League 2020-21 in the second round.
The twelve teams will be divided into three playoff courses, each containing four teams, which will play two semifinals in one leg (March 24-25, 2022) and a final (March 28-29, 2022).
The three winners of these finals qualify for Qatar.
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The Scots will probably need at least one point at home against Denmark to take a place in the seeded half of the draw.
As it stands, Scotland will not be seeded for that semi-final draw – which means they would be away in their one-on-one semi-final match against one of the six seeded countries.
Ahead of this week’s clashes, these seeds are Serbia, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and Wales.
If Scotland negotiate that semi-final hurdle, they would then face the winners of the second semi-final in their group, with the place for that all-or-nothing game decided by a draw.
A lot will change in the coming days when the group games are over.
Scotland will hope that they can get a better result against Denmark than Wales can against Belgium.
And they will also keep their fingers crossed that Turkey will not win in Montenegro.
List of current second-placed teams:
Group A: Portugal, Serbia, Luxembourg, Ireland, Azerbaijan
Group B: Spain, Sweden, Greece, Georgia, Kosovo
Group C: Italy, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, Lithuania
Group D: France, Finland, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan
Group E: Belgium, Wales, Czech Republic, Estonia, Belarus
Group F: Denmark, Scotland, Israel, Austria, Faroe Islands, Moldova
Group G: Netherlands, Turkey, Norway, Montenegro, Latvia, Gibraltar
Group H: Croatia, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus
Group I: England, Poland, Albania, Hungary, Andorra, San Marino
Group J: Germany, Northern Macedonia, Romania, Armenia, Iceland, Liechtenstein
Two participants in the Nations League (both unseeded):
Austria, Czech Republic
There is still everything to play for, of course, with the exact final order and the scores in many groups that are not really clear.
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