England and Wales were
drawn in the same group for the European Championships in France next summer.
The draw, this evening in
Paris, saw two of the home nations pitted together with Slovakia and Russia in
Group B. England will take on Wales in
Lens on June 16 in what will be their second match of the tournament.
England’s opening game is
in Marseille against Russia on June 11.
Marseille was the venue for England’s 2-0 win over Colombia in France ’98
when David Beckham scored a great free-kick.
England’s last group match will be against Slovakia in St. Etienne on
June 20. St. Etienne was another of
England’s venues in ’98, where they lost on penalties to Argentina and Michael
Owen scored ‘that goal’.
This tournament has been
expanded to 24 teams and this has thrown up the romantic occurrence of several
first-timers to Europe’s top party. Wales
and Northern Ireland will make their bow in June, as will Albania, Slovakia and
Iceland.
England were one of the
top seeds in the draw, along with France, Spain, Germany, Portugal and
Belgium. France were automatically drawn
into Group A, although UEFA couldn’t avoid the futility of having to draw their
name out anyway, presumably to make sure we hadn’t forgotten them.
They were drawn in with
Romania, Albania and Switzerland. France
v Romania will be the opening match Euro 2016 at Stade de France on June 10.
England were drawn out
next to go into Group B, along with Wales who meet Slovakia first up on day two
of the tournament in Bordeaux.
Northern Ireland were
drawn into Group C, which was headed up by World Champions, Germany. Ukraine and Poland make up the group. Northern Ireland’s first opponents will be
Poland in Nice on June 12. They take on
Germany in Paris on June 21, after meeting Ukraine in Lyon on June 16.
Defending champions,
Spain, were drawn into Group D and will meet Czech Republic in their opening
game. Turkey and Croatia were also drawn
into this group.
Group E appears to be the
toughest of them all and poor old Republic of Ireland were given the honour of
trying to find their way out of this one.
Belgium, who top FIFA rankings, Italy and Sweden are to be their
opponents. June 13 sees both opening
games in this group with the Republic coming up against Sweden in Stade de
France. They then take on Belgium in
Bordeaux on June 18 finishing with Italy in Lille on June 22.
Group F, in contrast,
appears the easiest of groups and Portugal can consider themselves very lucky
to be drawn top seed in this one. They’re
up against Iceland, Hungary and Austria.
The top two in each group
progress to the knock-out stage along with four of the best third-placed
teams. These will be determined by
points first, goal difference next and then goals scored. The knockout phase takes on a similar format
as World Cups do, with a Second Round, consisting of sixteen teams leading to a
Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals before the Final at Stade de France on July 10.
There are many matches to
look forward to and I’ll be posting some previews in anticipation of an
exciting tournament.
In addition, I will be
posting pieces on each of the previous tournaments.
If you want to follow the
tournament using an online wallchart then look no further than this
website. This guy puts together some
wonderful spreadsheets which means all you have to do is enter each result and
the document automatically updates. You
can try and predict the scores too and see who might meet who in the knock-out
rounds.
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