European Championship Qualifiers: Winners and Losers from Tuesday Games
The final evening of Euro 2016 qualifying brought with it more than one historic moment, with the big news from England's camp being a record-breaking 50th goal scored by Wayne Rooney.
His strike helped England to a 2-0 win, but there were eight other matches going on too as major nations battled for important points to help ease passage to the finals in France next year.
Here we take a look at each of the games and what the results mean for each group, to bring you our biggest winners and losers on the night from a team perspective.
Winners: Austria
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A fantastic win for Austria over Sweden guarantees first place, with seven wins from eight games putting Austria well clear at the top with two fixtures still to play.
With the likes of David Alaba, Martin Harnik and Marc Janko on the scoresheet once more, Austria ensured that they qualified in style for just their second major tournament since 1998. Indeed, 2016 will be only the second time the nation has ever taken part at the European Championships.
In what initially looked a tough group, Austria have flown through and fully deserve the plaudits coming their way.
Losers: Sweden
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By contrast, Sweden have lost twice in a week and look to be struggling.
An underwhelming qualifying campaign for Sweden should still see them at least secure a top-three finish in the group, but they cannot be seen as huge favourites to emerge through the play-offs successfully if they draw even a half-decent opponent.
The 4-1 loss to Austria was as demoralising as it was eye-opening, leaving Sweden on 12 points from eight games—that's only one point above Montenegro.
Winners: England
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Wayne Rooney found the goal he wanted to break the all-time scoring record for his nation, and Harry Kane came off the bench to ensure England's attempt to go through the qualifying campaign with a 100 percent record remained intact.
A 2-0 win over Switzerland was hard-fought, if not hugely entertaining, to leave Roy Hodgson's men with eight wins from eight and well clear at the top of the group.
With games remaining at home to Estonia and away to Lithuania, England must be confident of completing their 10 games with 30 points.
Winners: Russia
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Russia had a terrible run of form under Fabio Capello that eventually led to the Italian's dismissal, and they have immediately set about repairing the damage as they look to qualify for the Euros, the last major tournament before Russia themselves host the 2018 World Cup.
A thumping 7-0 win over Liechtenstein, allied to the 1-0 win over Sweden at the end of last week, means Russia are up to 14 points—into second place and an automatic qualification spot, with two games to go.
Moldova and Montenegro remain, surely putting Russia in the driving seat to take another six points and go on to secure passage to the finals in France.
Losers: Most of the Minnows, Again
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Luxembourg, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Moldova.
Four of the smallest and most frequently beaten sides in Europe went with the trend—all were beaten, unsurprisingly, and between them boast just two wins during this qualifying campaign.
The arguments will rage on over whether this size of nation needs an alternative battle ground to compete on and improve; if they shouldn't play a preliminary qualifying round to reach the current stage, should they perhaps arrange an additional competitive shield between themselves to feature in regularly and attempt to win?
Winners: San Marino
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Another unproductive qualifying campaign or not, different teams have different aims—and San Marino clearly had one of their own objectives being to hit the back of the net.
Their first goal in the eight group games came on Tuesday against Lithuania, which also happened to be their first competitive away goal since April 2001—34 matches per UEFA's Euro Twitter account.
Nobody will exactly be putting their hard-earned money on a rise up the FIFA rankings for San Marino because of it, especially since they still ended up losing 2-1 anyway, but a goal in this instance is worthy of note and they shouldn't be put down for celebrating it.
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