As somebody pointed out, my math skills are apparently lacking, and Holland and Romania are already qualified for next year's Euro (and Bulgaria is out). Here's one more wrinkle: Holland and Germany are in a fight to see who gets a top seed, which is not something you want. As it stands, the Dutch will join Austria, Switzerland, and Greece in the pool of top seeds, which is not a good thing... it's much better to be in the second tier and avoid the Italians and a couple other much tougher teams than Greece and Austria. At this point the French and the Spaniards, two of Europe's top teams, are looking like #4 seeds, proving once again that seven centuries of post-Renaissance European cultural and intellectual development wasn't enough to teach these people how to run a proper seeding system for a football tournament.
So if the Dutch have a suspiciously bad loss to Belarus tomorrow, they're likely to get a #2 seed and coal in their shoes come Sint Niklaas Day. How likely is this? Well let's just say coal futures are up $40 on the CME, which is like 2,50 in euros.
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