(Football news) Although the Welsh team’s hopes of finishing in the top two are genuinely dependent on winning all three of their remaining games, their Croatian opponents are still the favourites to go directly to Germany even after a rare midweek loss.
A mixed run of results in European Championship qualifying thus far has left Wales playing catch-up to Group D leaders Turkey and Croatia, while an alternative path is still available.
Rob Page’s team is now tied for fourth position in the standings with three points behind second-place Croatia after five games played.
In a closely contested group, Wales and its upcoming guests each have one match left against the other countries. On Sunday night, the match will take place in front of a full stadium in the capital of Wales.
The Dragons can still finish in the top two of Group D, but it might take a win this weekend and victories over Armenia and Turkey the following month to qualify outright after Croatia lost to them at home on Thursday.
Wales can still advance to the finals the following summer through a playoff in March if they place worse than third. The co-hosts for 2028, Qatar 2022, followed a similar route.
After a 4-0 friendly victory over Gibraltar in the middle of the week, Page will still be hoping his squad will forget about their home loss to Armenia in June and pull off an upset against the bronze medalists from the World Cup.
The top two teams in Group D squared up on Thursday night in the Croatian city of Osijek. Both sides had 10 points equal, but Croatia had the advantage of a game in hand as well as the psychological boost from their victory in Turkey a few months prior.
Zlatko Dalic’s team had played one fewer game than usual because they were at the most recent UEFA Nations League finals, but they were still unbeaten and topped the goal difference standings as they looked to win a sixth consecutive European Championship.
Before Turkey arrived in town under new coach Vincenzo Montella, Croatia had, in fact, not lost at home in a European Championship qualifier. However, the hosts were unable to recover as Baris Alper Yilmaz took advantage of a mistake committed by Dominik Livakovic in the twentieth minute.
Winning in Wales is now essential if the Kockasti are to avoid needing multiple points from their November meetings against Latvia and Armenia, having lost despite having multiple near-misses and having a penalty awarded overruled by a VAR review.
Croatia, which finished second in the World Cup in 2018 and advanced to the semifinals the previous year, wants to win the trophy in Germany the following summer after narrowly missing out on the title in the Nations League. This would be a fitting farewell for some of their more well-known players.
Prior to anything else, though, Luka Modric and company will try to win Group D on the road for the third time in a row, which would put them six points ahead of Wales.
Also read: Spain set to play Norway in the Euro Qualifiers
