Staff Reporter.
(AFP) – Roberto Mancini was not surprised that his Italy team were drawn with England in Euro 2024 qualifying on Sunday in yet another rematch of last year’s European Championship final won by the Azzurri.
Italy were crowned kings of Europe by beating England on penalties at Wembley in July last year and again got the better of Gareth Southgate’s team in this year’s Nations League.
Italy made it through to the final four of the Nations League and sent England down to League B, which led to the two teams being drawn in Group C alongside Ukraine, North Macedonia and Malta.
England’s relegation put them in Pot 2 for Sunday’s draw in Frankfurt while Italy was among the top seeds for qualifying for the tournament in Germany.
“I knew that we’d get either England or France, but that’s OK. It’s a decent five-team group, no easy matches but all ones we can have a go at,” said Mancini to RAI Sport.
Mancini will have the chance to gain some sort of revenge on North Macedonia, who threw the newly minted European champions into a national crisis in March by dumping them out of next month’s World Cup in the qualifying playoffs.
The defeat to the minnows in Palermo meant Italy will miss out on their second straight World Cup after also losing in the qualifying playoffs for the 2018 tournament.
“It’s one of those matches that you get every now and again, and as we saw in Palermo, we have to take every match seriously, even those that seem the simplest,” added Mancini.
“The World Cup is a cut that will bleed right to the end, we can only heal it by winning the next one.”
How does it work?
There are seven groups with five countries – and three groups with six teams in them. The four Nations League finalists – Croatia, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain – have gone into the smaller groups.
The top two teams in each of the 10 groups qualify directly for Euro 2024.
Germany automatically qualifies as hosts, while the remaining three teams will come via the Nations League play-offs.
The groups start on 23 March and end on 21 November 2023.
The groups in full
Group A: Spain, Scotland, Norway, Georgia, Cyprus
Group B: Netherlands, France, Republic of Ireland, Greece, Gibraltar
Group C: Italy, England, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Malta
Group D: Croatia, Wales, Armenia, Turkey, Latvia
Group E: Poland, Czech Rep, Albania, Faroe Islands, Moldova
Group F: Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Azerbaijan, Estonia
Group G: Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Lithuania
Group H: Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, Northern Ireland, San Marino
Group I: Switzerland. Israel, Romania, Kosovo, Belarus, Andorra
Group J: Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Liechtenstein.