The

UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying The UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying tournament was a football competition that was played from September 2014 to November 2015 to determine the 23 UEFA member men's national teams joining the automatically qualified host team France in the UEFA Euro 2 ...

Group I was one of the nine groups to decide which teams would qualify for the

UEFA Euro 2016 The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2016) or simply Euro 2016, was the 15th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe o ...

finals tournament. Group I consisted of five teams:

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hu ...

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''O ...

, and

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and share ...

, where they played against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The top two teams, Portugal and Albania, qualified directly for the finals. As third-placed Denmark weren't the highest-ranked among all third-placed teams, they advanced to the play-offs, where they lost to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

and thus failed to qualify.

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

were also partnered with the five-team Group I, which enabled the 2016 tournament hosts to play centralised friendlies against these countries on their 'spare' dates. However, these friendlies did not count in the qualifying group standings.

Standings

Matches

The fixtures were released by UEFA the same day as the draw, which was held on 23 February 2014 in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative ...

. Times are CET/CEST, as listed by UEFA (local times are in parentheses). ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Goalscorers

Discipline

A player was automatically suspended for the next match for the following offences: * Receiving a red card (red card suspensions could be extended for serious offences) * Receiving three yellow cards in three different matches, as well as after fifth and any subsequent yellow card (yellow card suspensions were carried forward to the play-offs, but not the finals or any other future international matches) The following suspensions were served during the qualifying matches: Portugal coach Fernando Santos was to serve an eight-match touchline ban for unsporting conduct towards the match officials when he was in charge of Greece against Costa Rica in the 2014 FIFA World Cup round of 16 match. The ban was temporarily suspended by the

Court of Arbitration for Sport The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS; french: Tribunal arbitral du sport, ''TAS'') is an international body established in 1984 to settle disputes related to sport through arbitration. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland and its ...

until the final appeal. On 23 March 2015, the CAS ruled that his ban should be reduced to four games, with two suspended during a six-month probationary period, meaning he missed Portugal's matches against Serbia (29 March 2015) and Armenia (13 June 2015).

Notes

References

External links

*https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/history/seasons/2016/qualifying/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Euro 2016

Group I Group 1 may refer to: * Alkali metal, a chemical element classification for Alkali metal * Group 1 (racing), a historic (until 1981) classification for Touring car racing, applied to standard touring cars. Comparable to modern FIA Group N * Group On ...

2014–15 in Danish football 2015–16 in Danish football 2014–15 in Portuguese football q 2014–15 in Serbian football 2015–16 in Serbian football 2014–15 in Albanian football Q 2014–15 in Armenian football 2015–16 in Armenian football