Euro 2024 qualifying primer – How can teams qualify? Why is England’s group so hard? What are the tiebreakers?

The 2023 March international break brings the start of qualifying for Euro 2024, the next iteration of the men’s European Championships that is due to be held in Germany. With the calendar chaos brought on by the Covid-19 crisis finally at an end teams are now operating on a more traditional timeline, with qualifying starting 12-18 months before the tournament starts. Ad But there are lot of interesting quirks about this qualifying period and some questions that need answering.

Let’s take a look at some of them shall we? Euro QualifyingRonaldo named in Martinez’s first Portugal squad for Euros qualifiers17/03/2023 AT 14:15 Man Utd through to semi-finals of Women’s FA Cup, Villa dump out Man City FA Cup semi-final draw sees Man City play Sheff Utd, Brighton v Man Utd Conte launches explosive broadside at 'selfish' Tottenham players and owner What is the structure for Euro 2024 qualifying? Hosts Germany qualified automatically for the tournament as per usual whilst due to the invasion of Ukraine, Russia remain banned from UEFA competitions. The remaining 53 teams were put into ten groups, seven groups of five and three groups of six. The pots were organised in accordance with the UEFA Nations League.

The four Nations League finalists – Netherlands, Croatia, Spain and Italy – were sorted into UNL pot, with the remaining teams then sorted into six pots based on their ranking in most recent Nations League, more on that little quirk later. The teams will all play each other twice, ending on November 21. Eagle-eyed readers here will notice that means there are only 21 teams in the tournament thus far.