On the same night England underwhelmed against Japan in a friendly, the four European spots at the 2026 World Cup were decided via the play-offs.

Italy have bottled their third World Cup finals in a row, Turkey got past Kosovo and will inevitably be your casual football fan friend’s dark horses to go far this summer, Denmark fell short against Czechia, and Sweden dramatically won their play-off against Poland in Stockholm.

Here’s how it happened.

Bosnia and Herzegovina 1-1 Italy (4-1 on penalties)

Italy don’t do it the easy way. They have now failed to qualify for three consecutive World Cup finals after back-to-back group-stage exits in 2010 and 2014. Their most recent World Cup knockout game was the 2006 final victory against France. A very well-known fact, but a crazy one all the same. Perhaps the craziest of all the crazy football facts.

When Moise Kean gave them the lead in Zenica, Italy were expected to run away with their play-off final against Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Inter defender Alessandro Bastoni turned a potentially straightforward win into an absolute slog when he was shown a straight red card for a mistimed last-man tackle.

Gianluigi Donnarumma and his defenders kept the hosts at bay until Haris Tabakovic’s 79th-minute goal, which sent a nail-biting tie to extra time.

After an extra 30 minutes, Italy were battered but managed to hold on. Their last penalty shootout before Tuesday was in 2021 in the European Championship final against England. Sorry for the reminder.

After Bosnia scored their first of four successful spot-kicks, Pio Esposito skied his all the way back to Pescara. Not an ideal start. Sandro Tonali’s was brilliant, but then up stepped Bryan Cristante, who crashed the ball against the crossbar.

Three World Cups in a row missed for Italy. Absolutely crazy. Gennaro Gattuso is finished and, when we all thought it wasn’t possible, they’ve reached a new nadir.

For Bosnia and Herzegovina, it’s only their second World Cup as an independent country, and their first since 2014.

Sweden 3-2 Poland

Viktor Gyokeres is Sweden’s new hero. For a country with relatively little modern football heritage, they have an incredible knack for producing elite strikers. First it was Henrik Larsson and then Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They now have Gyokeres and Alexander Isak, who are off to the World Cup despite finishing bottom of their group with two points.

Gyokeres will hog the headlines, but Sweden should be thanking the Nations League for being their get-out-of-jail-free card and offering them a second chance in the play-offs.

They beat Ukraine with ease in their semi-final and had to work a lot harder to see off a plucky Poland side on Tuesday evening.

After his hat-trick against Ukraine, Arsenal striker Gyokeres scored the winner with only two minutes of the 90 remaining to send every Swede in attendance wild.

Graham Potter will manage at a World Cup. Amazing.

Czechia 2-2 Denmark (3-1 on penalties)

It was a very dramatic night, wasn’t it?

Czechia needed penalties to see off the Republic of Ireland after coming from 2-0 down last week and, after being pegged back twice by Denmark on Tuesday, they were involved in another shootout.

It was 1-1 at full-time and then 2-2 after extra time, and it was the Czechs celebrating after some abysmal Danish penalties.

The country of Denmark are clearly still reeling after Scott McTominay’s bicycle kick.

Kosovo 0-1 Turkey

Turkey did just enough in both of their play-off games this break, beating Romania 1-0 at home last week and then travelling to Kosovo to earn another 1-0 win.

Brighton’s Ferdi Kadioglu scored the winner against Romania and Fenerbahce’s Kerem Akturkoglu was on target again to be the man who sent Turkey to the World Cup finals.

Managed by Vincenzo Montella, Turkey will be many people’s dark horses, for no reason other than Euro 2020 banter.

What a group they have, though. The United States, Paraguay and Australia? They could actually top that.

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