The Crescent-Stars are now third in Group A two points ahead of the Dutch side.
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Czech Republic host Turkey tonight in Prague in their penultimate qualification match before travelling to the Netherlands on Tuesday with the under-performing Dutch desperate for a victory in their hunt for a play-off place.
The Turks are finally in an advantageous position to qualify for the 2016 European Championship playoffs with two points on the Netherlands going into the final stretch of Group A matches.
The result leaves Holland, third at the World Cup just over a year ago, on the verge of missing out all together, and needing the Turks to lose at home to Iceland on Tuesday to have any chance of progressing.
The Czech Republic has scored plenty of goals recently, but the major concern for the team is the inability to keep clean sheets even against weaker opponents.
“Now, our likelihood is in our own hands”.
“Someone thinks that we’ll drop points – good luck with that”, Arda said in a news conference. “There is no group above us”. However many matches we drew, we showed this in the Latvia and Netherlands matches. Turkey can’t afford to bench him in such an important match, but they also can’t do much more than cross their fingers and hope that he doesn’t faceplant in this match – especially since Selassie is a talented fullback who defends his flank very well.
The national team need to concentrate on the activity at hand.
The Czechs, playing without a number of regular players, including goalkeeper Petr Cech, remain in second place behind Iceland in Group A.
Incidentally, the two teams Turkey should play are the group leaders. Turkey can turn that in its favor though.
Elsewhere, Norway can seal their passage to the European championship if they can beat last-placed Malta on Saturday and Croatia then fail to overcome Bulgaria later in the day.
Historically, Turkey’s record in 17 games against Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic is W3 D3 L11. Iceland had won 3-. Wales and Belgium remain strong favourites and have both secured a play-off spot at least, with Chris Coleman’s squad one point ahead of the Belgians in first place, needing just a point from the two remaining matches against Andorra and Bosnia-Herzegovina to secure an historic place at an global tournament. No team [in the group] is superior to us.
Group E will play on Friday the 9th and Monday the 12th. For punters the more pressing issue is whether they can finish in style with a win tonight away to Bosnia and Herzegovina. A draw, and they’ll need Belgium to fall to an unlikely defeat to take it to the last game.
But the Dutch are not sitting comfortable either.
Blind, who has lost both of his opening two games in charge since taking over from Guus Hiddink in July, with the Netherlands failing to score in both matches, have endured a poor run away from home in qualification so far, losing three of their four contests on the road. But Mykhaylo Fomenko’s side, who have ensured a play-off place, can still qualify directly if they pick up enough points in matches against Macedonia and Spain. I assume they’ll slip up. We will have to do all the things to do so. “How we get there doesn’t really matter”, he added.
Italy are unbeaten in their eight matches so far and Conte will want his side to maintain that record going into the finals next summer.
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Michael Mullarkey, Stephen Child, Peter Kirkup, Craig Pawson and Kevin Friend will be Atkinson’s assistants. The Netherlands visits Kazakhstan at the same time.
