November’s International Round Up: Part Two
Football can be a funny old game. Take the two weeks that Brighton midfielder Tudor Baluta has had for example.
On Tuesday 5th November, Baluta played 90 minutes at right back for Brighton’s Under 23s in their Leasing.com Trophy group game away at Leyton Orient. 709 people were at the Breyer Group Stadium, which is what Brisbane Road is apparently called these days.
Fast forward two weeks to Tuesday 19th November and Baluta was lining up for in the centre of midfield for Romania against Spain inside Atletico Madrid’s Metropolitano Stadium in a Euro 2020 Qualifier.
In the space of 14 days, Baluta had gone from watching David Button score a penalty in a shoot out to trying to mark Sergio Busquets, skip past Sergio Ramos and tackle Alvaro Morata.
It wasn’t too much of a success either as Romania were on the end of a 5-0 defeat. Gerard Moreno scored twice for Spain with Fabian Ruiz, Mikel Oyarzabal and an Adrian Rus own goal completing the rout.
The result means that Romania finish fourth in their qualifying group, although they still have an opportunity to make it through to the finals via the play offs.
Don’t ask how as UEFA seem to have come up with a system that not even Stephen Hawking could fathom. What we do know though is that Baluta and co are one of four teams – the others are Bulgaria, Hungary or Israel – who could face Scotland and then either Norway or Serbia for a spot in the final 24. Told you it was complicated, other than the very glaring fact that Scotland aren’t going to make it.
Shane Duffy and Aaron Connolly are also in play offs having finished third in Group D. Ireland could have qualified automatically with victory over Denmark on Monday night, but Mick McCarthy’s side found themselves drawing 1-1 at the Aviva Stadium. Connolly missed the game through injury.
The Boys in Green had gone 1-0 behind to a goal from the very Danish-sounding Martin Braithwaite with 15 minutes remaining. McCarthy responded by throwing Duffy – captaining his country for the first time – up front, where he began putting himself about like a man possessed.
This wasn’t what we wanted to see really given that Duffy will have a vital role to play in Saturday’s game against title-challenging Leicester City.
It was an approach that had the desired effect though for Ireland as Matt Doherty headed home Enda Stevens’ cross with five minutes remaining to level things up.
That set up a tense finale but Ireland couldn’t quite find a winner and as a result, they’ll now have to go through games with Slovakia and then potentially Bosnia-Herzegovina or Northern Ireland in the play offs. North v Republic with a place in the finals on the line could be a tasty prospect.
Davy Propper and the Netherlands will be at the tournament no matter what having already qualified. That didn’t stop them running riot against Estonia in Amsterdam however as they hammered their hapless opponents 5-0.
Liverpool’s Georginio Wijnaldum scored a hat-trick from midfield with Plucky Little Bournemouth defender Nathan Ake and teenager Myron Boadu the other scores for De Oranje.
Propper played as one of two holding midfielders alongside Frenkie de Jong. The two are developing a blossoming partnership with no lesser football judge than Marco van Basten saying in the run up to the game that Propper is every bit as good as de Jong.
Yes, you’ve read that right – one of the greatest players of all time reckons that Propper is on the same level as a bloke who cost Barcelona €75m in the summer.
Over in America, Steve Alzate made his full debut for Columbia in their 1-0 win over Ecuador in New York. He played the full 90 minutes in a game that was decided by a header from Porto’s Mateus Uribe three minutes before half time.
Alexis Mac Allister meanwhile was an unused sub in Argentina’s 2-2 draw against Uruguay. The friendly took place at Bloomfield in Tel Aviv, making it arguably the biggest game ever to be held in Israel.
The reason behind this appears to be that Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams and the Comtec Group threw a shit load of money at it. They certainly got what they paid for though given the roll call of scorers as Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani all ended up netting.
