EURO 2024: San Marino drawn in Group H

The San Marino National Team has discovered its immediate future in the qualifiers for UEFA EURO 2024 in Germany. Having been certain of being placed in one of the three groups of six teams (H, I and J) along with Andorra and Liechtenstein, the Titans have been drawn into Group H. Top seed are Denmark, the only new opponent among the teams sharing the group with San Marino. There have, in fact, already been several meetings with Finland, Slovenia and Northern Ireland. The Scandinavians faced the Titans in qualifying for EURO 1996 and EURO 2012. While the first encounter yielded Pier Domenico Della Valle’s goal (Helsinki, 1994), the most recent one – in Serravalle – ended in a 1-0 defeat. The latest meetings with Slovenia are more recent, between competitive fixtures and an international friendly. The latter, played two years ago at the Stozice Arena, finished 4-0 to the hosts. There have been four identical previous encounters with Northern Ireland, the most recent in 2017 in Serravalle (0-3). As for Kazakhstan, the sides met in the recent EURO 2020 qualifying campaign: on both occasions there were four goals scored. While in Astana they all went in favour of the home side, in Serravalle the Titans had the satisfaction of finding the net through Filippo Berardi’s strike – scoring after being played through by Lunadei. “We are facing a tough group full of extremely physical teams, a characteristic that we struggle with more than others,” commented San Marino head coach Fabrizio Costantini from the Festhalle in Frankfurt. “At the same time, it is a fascinating group. I like the way Denmark and Finland approach games, perhaps differently from what is generally sought after in Europe. Intensity and physicality are their main strengths and focusing on those does not mean achieving lesser results: the fact they come from the first and second seeding pots proves this. Thinking in terms of pots, we might have hoped for a kinder draw from the fifth pot: Northern Ireland are a very difficult side to face and from a technical and tactical point of view they are quite strong. For us it will be crucial to face the teams at the right time,” Costantini hopes. “Many of them schedule their domestic activity at different times of the year compared to us, due to the climatic conditions in their countries. If meeting them at the ideal time for us could give us a small boost, on the other hand facing them when conditions are most favourable to them could create significant problems.”

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