Germany Face Tense Wait For Qualification

It seems strange that a team that has gained 22 points from a pos­si­ble 24 is not yet guar­an­teed World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Whilst it is true that Eng­land, Nether­lands and Spain have per­fect qual­i­fi­ca­tion records, Ger­many might feel like they have also done enough already. In fact they face a tense cli­max to their qual­i­fi­ca­tion campaign.

Rus­sia are one point adrift, hav­ing won all of their matches aside from their 2–1 reverse in Dort­mund last Octo­ber. Group 4 has there­fore been some­thing of a mis­match, which for­tu­nately is not a com­mon theme through­out the groups.

Although the three Euro­pean qual­i­fiers have booked their tick­ets to South Africa with time to spare, Groups 1 and 2 have four teams still in with a chance of qual­i­fy­ing, whilst five teams in Groups 3 and 7 are still in the hunt.

This means that for every ‘anti-football’ defen­sive dis­play pro­vided by Andorra or San Marino there is a com­pet­i­tive fix­ture between two well-matched teams. It is Ger­many and Russia’s bad luck that they are a level above the other teams in their group.

Joachim Löw and Guus Hiddink’s out­fits face a show­down in Moscow on Octo­ber 10th, after which both teams have one game left to play. Few teams return with any­thing more than a point from a trip to the Russ­ian cap­i­tal and a defeat could prove cru­cial for Ger­many, as Rus­sia travel to Azer­bai­jan four days later to play a team with one point to their name so far.

Ger­many host Fin­land on the same day, the team who have denied Löw’s men a 100% record thanks to a 3–3 draw in Helsinki last Sep­tem­ber. Even a point in Moscow will make that final fix­ture a tenser affair than appeared likely and Ger­man fans will be recall­ing their qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2002 World Cup with some trepidation.

Then they needed a vic­tory against the Finns to beat Eng­land to the auto­matic qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot, but were held to a goal­less draw in Gelsenkirchen. A com­fort­able play-off win against Ukraine secured a finals appear­ance which stretched to the final, but Ger­many can­not look so far ahead yet, as with the seed­ings sys­tem still to be con­firmed, France and Por­tu­gal remain pos­si­ble oppo­nents with sim­i­lar World Cup bet­ting odds.