Euro 2024 Qualification Results: Wales Forced To Play-off

Neco Williams' goal was unable to bring Wales automatically to the Euro 2024 finals (Instagram/@fawales).

JAKARTA - The final match of Group D of Euro 2024 Qualification took place hot on Wednesday, November 22, 2023. The Wales vs. Turkey and Croatia vs Armenia had to play together because the race for tickets to qualify automatically for the finals was still open.

Prior to the match, Wales collected 11 points and stood in third place, while Croatia was at runner-up with 13 points.

Wales, who hunted for automatic tickets to Jakarta, searched for a target of three points. They immediately took the initiative of the attack at the start of the match.

Sure enough, this motivation prompted Si Naga, the nickname Wales, to score a quick goal. The game has only been running for seven minutes, Neco Williams put the hosts 1-0 up.

This condition brought Wales to shift Croatia in second place in the standings with 14 points. You see, Croatia's game is still running 0-0 with the same points collection, 14 points.

However, that advantage already has signs that it will not last until the end of the match. The reason is, the hosts are not given much chance to control the game.

It was noted that Wales was only able to control 39 percent of Turkey's 61 percent banded ball. Even so, the Dragon is actually more effective in pressing.

They fired more, 10 times, and four of them were right on target. Then, Turkey shot nine times and only two of them headed for the net.

Wales seemed to have difficulty converting the opportunity into a goal and dominated until the game went 40 minutes. As it turned out, Turkey, which had already qualified for Germany, continued to perform optimally even without a target.

Disaster for Wales then came just before halftime. Croatia opened the scoring through Ante Budimir in the 43rd minute. Automatically, Luka Modric and colleagues evicted Wales and returned to second place in the standings with temporary points 16.

The situation lasted until the break. In the second half, Wales tried to add a goal to the visitors' goal while hoping Croatia slipped into another party.

However, this scenario was dashed after Turkey actually broke into the Wales goal in the 70th minute through Yusuf Yazici's action.

The 1-1 score between Wales vs Turkey made Croatia play more comfortably against Armenia. Croatia is increasing in pressure to add goals, but nothing has resulted in a goal until the end of the match. They managed to win three points with a narrow 1-0 victory.

Meanwhile, Wales' condition also did not change until the game was over. They only managed to pick one point at home.

The win brought Si Naga forced to be thrown into the play-offs to fight for the remaining three tickets to the Euro 2024 finals. They collected 12 points, while Croatia accompanied Turkey automatically to qualify for Germany with 16 points.