The best scorers of the Euro 2024 qualification
Yesterday the last qualifying matches for the Euro 2024 in Germany were played, and the last team to qualify was Croatia as they secured the place after a 1-0 victory against Armenia, but there are still three teams that have a chance to qualify through playoffs via Nation League.Here we will go through the Euro 2024 qualifiers' best scorers and notable hat-tricks during the qualifiers, and also take look at the upcoming playoffs and all the teams that qualified for the Euro 2024.
Romelu Lukaku - best goal scorer in the qualifiers
The best scorers of the qualifiers
First we will concentrate on the best scorers in the Euro 2024 qualifiers, all qualifications games played in 2023. Since it is only the qualifier stage and no tournament or league, there are "Golden Boot" winner in the traditional sense, but it is still interesting to see who the hottest scorers were.Romelu Lukaku by far the best scorer
The qualifiers best scorer was the Belgian Romelu Lukaku who scored in a whopping 14 goals, and this in a group with only 5 teams which meant that he only played 8 games. He finished the qualifiers in the best way as he scored 4 goals in the last match against Azerbaijan in Belgium's 5-0 win. He also started the qualifiers great, with a hat-trick away to Sweden in Belgium's opening 3-0 win. Overall, Lukaku has now scored 83 goals for the Belgian national team.The second-best goal scorer was Cristiano Ronaldo, who showed that he is far from finished as a reliable goal scorer in the national team. Ronaldo scored 10 goals in total; however, this was done in 10 matches since Portugal played in a qualifying group with 6 teams. He has now scored an unparalleled 128 national team goals.
Third most goals came from Kylian Mbappé who scored 9 goals in France's 8 games. He scored a hat-trick in France's incredible 14-0 win over Gibraltar in the penultimate round, and he also assisted to three goals in that match. He has now scored 46 national team goals, 10 goals behind Olivier Giroud who is France's best ever goalscorer at this point, but given that Mbappé is only 24 years old, it will not be many years before he is both caught up and passed Giroud.
Next, we find England's Harry Kane with 8 scored goals in 10 matches, and after him Denmark's Rasmus Højlund and Scotland's Scott McTominay with 7 goals each.
Hat-tricks in the Euro 2024 qualifiers
In addition to the aforementioned hat-tricks from Lukaku and Mbappé, there were 8 more hat-tricks scored from the same amount of different players:- Rasmus Højlund in Denmark's 3-1 victory at home against Finland on March 23
- Renato Steffen in Switzerland's 5-0 win away to Belarus March 25
- Aron Gunnarsson in Iceland's 7-0 win away to Liechtenstein on March 26
- Bukayo Saka in England's 7-0 win at home against North Macedonia on June 19
- Daniel Håkans in Finland's 6-0 win at home against San Marino on June 19
- Álvaro Morata in Spain's 7-1 win away to Georgia on September 8
- Aleksandar Mitrovic in Serbia's 3-1 win away to Lithuania on September 10
- Calvin Stengs in Holland's 6-0 win away to Gibraltar yesterday, November 21
Remaining playoff via Nations League
12 teams that failed to qualify still have the chance to qualify via the Nation League playoff. They are fighting for three spots, and these are the 12 teams that did best in the Nations League that are not yet qualified. There are three different playoff branches with four teams each with a "semi-final" and a "final". There are no home-away games here, all matches are direct knockout matches and these matches will be played on March 21 and 26, 2024. You can read everything about how this playoff works on UEFA's website.The three playoff groups
These are the remaining teams that still have the chance to qualify for the Euro 2024 and the various playoff branches they play in. Who Finland, Ukraine and Iceland will meet will be drawn tomorrow, November 23.
Playoff A
- Poland vs Estonia
- Wales vs Finland, Ukraine or Iceland
Playoff B
- Israel vs Ukraine or Iceland
- Bosnia Herzegovina vs Finland or Ukraine
Playoff C
- Georgia vs Luxembourg
- Greece vs Kazakhstan
The teams that qualified and draw pots
All the teams below are the 21 teams that are qualified for the Euro 2024, as well as the four seeded draw pot groups. The draw takes place on December 2 and the Euro 2024 in Germany will be played between June 14 and July 14, 2024. Italy are the reigning champions.Draw pot 1: Germany (qualified as host country) plus Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Spain
Draw pot 2: Albania, Denmark, Romania, Turkey, Hungary and Austria
Draw pot 3: Holland, Croatia, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic
Draw pot 4: Italy, Switzerland, Serbia and the three winners from the playoffs
Worth noting is that Holland and Croatia are in draw pot 3 and Italy in draw pot 4. If Holland or Croatia end up in the same group as Italy, we will have a rarely seen "group of death" regardless of which teams end up in the same group from draw pot 1 and 2.
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