Going off this:
http://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/...83/story.shtml

Three remaining combinations have Wales facing Turkey; two have them tackling Albania and one Wales. Five of the six combinations have Northern Ireland playing France. For Wales to face Northern Ireland, third place in E and F both have to qualify tomorrow.

Full outline below:

Impressed with some of the guys on here... Properly on the ball.. Thanks!

Nb. I still am not clear!

So basically Turkey will qualify tomorrow IF both Sweden and ROI fail to win?? Thanks

The fears about the qualifying being boring with 24 teams making it proved to be unfounded but the other fear that 24 teams is a terrible number for the tournament itself has sadly proved correct. Too many teams playing ultra defensively trying to hold on for 3 or 4 points to slide through.

That performance from Slovakia last night showed how big an effect it has had. With only 2 going through they would have been going hell for leather for a win but as it was they knew if they didn't concede they would be through and so they made no effort to attack. Similarly today NI knew that a narrow defeat would likely be enough so had no incentive to try and play football.

Also, would it make sense for Portugal to finish 2nd or 3rd in their group to avoid being in the bottom half of the draw?

Surely that's not the case as if a third place team from group f had a better result ie Austria Iceland draw Portugal Hungary draw/ Portugal win then Turkey would be out due to GD

Group F play before Group E for some reason, which means England will know who they play before Wales do for certain

Other way round, they need to win the group to miss the half of death.

Turkey are currently the third best 3rd place finisher out of the four completed groups so they would need BOTH group E and group F's 3rd place finisher to overtake them to go out.

If Turkey qualify, they will face Wales, that is absolutely certain. For Albania to qualify, Turkey must also qualify (as they have scored more goals than Albania), therefore WALvALB is impossible.

They only way for WALvNIR is if Sweden and/or R Ireland win, AND Portugal and Iceland both lose.

Yes but they'll still have to play most likely Belguim if they come 1st, tricky one, 2nd they play England if they're 3rd it's probably Croatia. I don't think any of these matches they'd exactly be looking forward to

Ah yes got it forgot about Turkey getting above Albania.

Yes, if Sweden and Ireland both fail to win then Turkey will qualify.

Albania's position looks far more precarious due to their poor goal difference and lack of goals scored. The only way they'll go through (even if we assume Sweden and Ireland fail to win) is if Hungary beat Portugal and there's a winner in the Iceland v Austria match.

Not quite, your right about Portugal but if Austria fail to beat Iceland that along with a Portugal defeat would put through only 2 teams from Group F through

Incidentally if Turkey do go through does this make them the masters of pulling it out of the bag at the last or just lucky.

A last minute goal in qualifying sent them through as best runners up and after failing to turn up for two games at this tournament they somehow get themselves into a strong position to qualify with one win

Thanks for your answers guys ^

It is also unfair that the four sides in Group F will know exactly what is needed to secure third place whereas Albania had no idea whether a 1-0 win would be good enough or not.

Oh yeah, I got really confused trying to work out group F, thanks for clarifying.

I wonder whether it wouldn't be the lesser of two evils to go all the way to 32 qualifiers for future Euros. 24 is just such an awful number, so unfair for all the reasons discussed in this thread.

But then there only a limited number of European countries who could host a tournament with 32 teams.

Unless you do joint bids.

Yes Albania waiting around three days to probably go,out

Think this best third placed teams qualifying idea is a joke. Presumably it's been said before (haven't read through the thread), but the teams in the groups that play their final games later on have an unfair advantage in knowing what results will be good enough to guarantee them a place in the knock-outs, whereas the teams in the groups that finished earliest have to wait to find out. The only way it would be fair would be if every single team played their final group game at the same time, which wouldn't happen obviously.

I was going to do a poll on this, based on past tournaments which is preferable. My order of preference would be 16, then 32, then 8 with 24 the worst option.

Even 20, which the Heineken Cup use in rugby is marginally preferable to 24 teams.

For a World Cup, 32 teams is great. I am not sure European quality can sustain that although Holland, Denmark, Serbia, possibly Scotland, Slovenia and Norway wouldn't weaken it too much, especially with the next tournament not having a host nation.

Who the hell in Europe can host a 32 team tournament?

England, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Italy.

Nobody else could.

Mind you Qatar could, so I suppose if there's a will (usually bribery) there's a way.