Search THE HOTSPOT

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Euro 2016 Qualifiers Round up


​England ensured that they qualified for Euro 2016 with a 100% record from their group with a 3-0 win over Lithuania, grabbing their tenth competitive win in a row ahead of next summer's tournament. 

Everton's Ross Barkley scored the first goal just before the half-hour mark, with Harry Kane forcing an own goal to double the advantage just a couple of minutes later. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain fired home a third in the second half to add a flourish to the result for England.


Roy Hodgson took an opportunity to rotate his team from Friday's win over Estonia with only Kane, Barkley and Adam Lallana keeping their places in the side - the likes of Jack Butland and Kieran Gibbs getting starts. 
The opening period of the game was pretty sedate with nothing riding on the match for either team, before Barkley's long-range shot took a massive deflection off a Lithuania defender and looped past the stranded Giedrius Arlauskis in goal. 
The second goal saw Arlauskis fall victim to bad luck again, with Harry Kane's shot hitting the post and bouncing in off the back of the keeper's head from point-blank range, before he was beaten at his near post in the second half by Oxlade-Chamberlain's powerful finish after the Arsenal man was played through by Kyle Walker. 


A flat second half ended with England comfortable 3-0 winners, but not before Jamie Vardy and Jonjo Shelvey picked up their mandatory bookings in the final quarter of an hour.
Slovakia's nervy 4-2 win in Luxembourg meant that they qualified as runners-up to Spain in group C after the home side came back from 3-0 down to give the Slovakians a scare in the second half before Marek Hamsik scored in second-half injury time to seal the result, leaving Ukraine to fight it out in the play-offs after a goal on international debut from Mario Gaspar condemned the Ukrainians to a 1-0 defeat to the group winners. 

In the evening's early kickoffs, Russia beat Montenegro to secure their place in the summer's tournament thanks to goals from Oleg Kuzmin and Aleksandr Kokorin in a 2-0 win, puttingSweden into a qualification playoff despite their own 2-0 win over Moldova - their goals from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Erkan Zengin.

Austria went through top of that group undefeated with nine wins and a draw, Marko Arnautovic scoring their opener in a 3-0 win over Lichtenstein

No comments: