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A great weekend of qualifying for the nations of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland has put all five teams in contention to qualify for the UEFA European Championships.
After England’s routine win on Friday, Northern Ireland and Scotland both got big wins to put themselves in qualifying position. After losing their last fixture away at Romania, Northern Ireland got themselves back on track with a brace from Kyle Lafferty in a 2-1 win against Finland at Windsor Park. The victory kept the Irish in second place and now four points ahead of Hungary, who drew at home with Greece.
That same night, Scotland won comfortably against Gibraltar as Steven Fletcher broke his international goal drought going back to 2009 scoring a hat trick to help his country win 6-1. Even though Germany won the result means that Scotland stay level on points with the World Cup winners and, thanks to the big win, now a bit closer to them on goal difference. Ireland, on the other hand, weren’t able to win but did get a draw against group leaders Poland thanks to a last minute equalizer from Shane Long to stay in the race to Paris.
Lastly, Wales sent out a huge statement to their group with a big 3-0 win against second place Israel to go atop of the group. Two goals and an assist from Gareth Bale gave the Welsh the big win they needed to overtake their opponents in the group and the belief that they can qualify for the competition for the first time in their history.
So what do the results mean? It now means that two out of the five teams are at the top of their groups, two are second and Republic of Ireland are very much in the picture. The group games are important to all five teams, Scotland haven’t qualified for the Euros since 1998. England failed to qualify for 2008 and Wales and Northern Ireland have never qualified for the competition.
So, the fact that all five could qualify for the same competition has been unimaginable for decades but thanks to five big results this achievement is a strong possibility.