2014 FIFA World Cup Qualification (UEFA)
The European zone of qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup saw 53 teams competing for 13 places in the finals in Brazil. The draw for the qualification groups was held during the World Cup Preliminary Draw at the Marina da Glória in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 30 July 2011. The qualification format was the same as 2010. The teams were drawn into eight groups of six teams and one group of five, with the nine group winners qualifying directly for the final tournament. The eight best runners-up (determined by records against the first-, third-, fourth- and fifth-placed teams in their groups to ensure equity between different groups) were drawn in two-legged play-offs that determined the remaining four qualifying nations. The qualification process started on 7 September 2012, over two months after the end of UEFA Euro 2012, and ended on 19 November 2013. Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland qualified in the first ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robin Van Persie
Robin van Persie (; born 6 August 1983) is a Dutch football coach and former professional association football, footballer who is the head coach of Eredivisie club Feyenoord. He is regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and was known for his technique, ball control, and vision. Van Persie is the joint List of international goals scored by Robin van Persie, all-time top scorer for the men's Netherlands national football team, Netherlands national team. Starting his career as a Winger (football), winger, Van Persie made his senior debut for Feyenoord during the 2001–02 season, which culminated with victory in the 2002 UEFA Cup final; he was also named as the Dutch Footballer of the Year#Dutch Football Talent of the Year (Young player), Dutch Football Talent of the Year. After five years with Feyenoord, he fell out with manager Bert van Marwijk, and he joined English club Arsenal F.C., Arsenal in 2004 as a long-term replacement for compatriot Dennis Bergkamp. Van ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Croatia National Football Team
The Croatia national football team () represents Croatia in men's international Association football, football matches. It is governed by the Croatian Football Federation (HNS), the governing body for football in Croatia. It is a member of UEFA in Europe and FIFA in global competitions. The team's colours reference two national symbols: the Croatian checkerboard and the Flag of Croatia, country's tricolour. They are colloquially known as the (Blazers) and (Checkered Ones). Since 2000, the have qualified for every major tournament except UEFA Euro 2000 and the 2010 FIFA World Cup. At the FIFA World Cup, World Cup, Croatia has finished second once (2018 FIFA World Cup, 2018) and third on two occasions (1998 FIFA World Cup, 1998, 2022 FIFA World Cup, 2022), securing three World Cup medals. Davor Šuker won the FIFA World Cup awards, Golden Shoe and the FIFA World Cup awards, Silver Ball in 1998, while Luka Modrić won the FIFA World Cup awards, Golden Ball in 2018 and the FIFA ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Group A
Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived touring cars for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles were limited in terms of power, weight, allowed technology and overall cost. Group A was aimed at ensuring numerous entries in races of privately owned vehicles. Group A was introduced by the FIA in 1982 to replace the outgoing Group 2 as "modified touring cars", while Group N would replace Group 1 as "standard touring cars". During the early years there were no further formula for production based race cars. Cars from multiple Groups could contest the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers for example until 1997 when the specific World Rally Car formula was introduced as the only option. In recent years Groups A and N have begun to be phased out in eligibility in championships though they continue to form the homologation basis for m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2014 FIFA World Cup Qualification – UEFA Second Round
The UEFA second round was contested by the best eight runners-up from the nine first-round groups from the UEFA segment of the qualification tournament for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in football. The winners – Croatia, France, Greece, and Portugal – of each of four home and away ties joined the group winners in the World Cup in Brazil. The matches, which are often referred to as 'play-offs', were held on 15 and 19 November 2013. The draw for the ties was held in Zürich on 21 October, with the October 2013 FIFA World Rankings used to decide which of the teams would be seeded. Qualified teams The eight best runners-up from the UEFA first round qualified for the play-offs; with one group having one team fewer than the others, matches against the sixth-placed team in each First Round group did not count for this ranking. As a result, eight matches played by each team counted for the purposes of ranking the runners-up (below table). Ranking of second-placed teams The eight best runn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ranking Of Second-placed Teams
A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered. If two items are the same in rank it is considered a tie. By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see. Analysis of data obtained by ranki ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Georgia (country)
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region on the coast of the Black Sea. It is located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia, and is today generally regarded as part of Europe. It is bordered to the north and northeast by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers an area of . It has a Demographics of Georgia (country), population of 3.7 million, of which over a third live in the capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city, Tbilisi. Ethnic Georgians, who are native to the region, constitute a majority of the country's population and are its titular nation. Georgia has been inhabited since prehistory, hosting the world's earliest known sites of winemaking, gold mining, and textiles. The Classical antiquity, classical era saw the emergence of several kingdoms, such as Colchis and Kingdom of Iberia, Iberia, that formed the nucleus of the modern Georgian state. In the early fourth centu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders of Russia, land borders with fourteen countries. Russia is the List of European countries by population, most populous country in Europe and the List of countries and dependencies by population, ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a Urbanization by sovereign state, highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1 million inhabitants. Moscow, the List of metropolitan areas in Europe, most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and Society and culture in Saint Petersburg, cultural centre. Human settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Georgia–Russia Relations
Bilateral relations between Georgia and Russia date back hundreds of years and remain complicated despite certain religious and historical ties that exist between the two countries and their people.Ammon, Philipp: Georgien zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit und russischer Okkupation: Die Wurzeln des russisch-georgischen Konflikts vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende der ersten georgischen Republik (1921), Kitab, Klagenfurt 2015, Contacts between Russia and Georgia date back to the 15th and 16th centuries, and the most important stage started in the 1580s, when the Georgian kingdom of Kakheti and the Russian Empire signed a treaty of alliance in 1587. Relations between the two countries developed vibrantly and culminated in the Treaty of Georgievsk, which established eastern Georgia as a protectorate of Russia. At that time, Georgia saw Russia as a powerful Christian and modernizing neighbor, capable of protecting Georgia from invading Muslim empires and North Caucasian raiders.W.E.D. All ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia (country), Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city. The territory of what is now Azerbaijan was ruled first by Caucasian Albania and later by various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of Russo-Persian War (1804–1813), 1804–1813 and Russo-Persian War (1826–1828), 1826–1828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Treaty of Gulistan, Gulistan in 1813 and Treaty of Turkmenchay, Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Armenia
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia (country), Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the Capital city, capital, largest city and Economy of Armenia, financial center. The Armenian Highlands has been home to the Hayasa-Azzi, Shupria and Nairi. By at least 600 BC, an archaic form of Proto-Armenian language, Proto-Armenian, an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, had diffused into the Armenian Highlands.Robert Drews (2017). ''Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe''. Routledge. . p. 228: "The vernacular of the Great Kingdom of Biainili was quite certainly Armenian. The Armenian language was obviously the region's vernacular in the fifth century BC, when Persian commanders and Greek writers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Armenia–Azerbaijan Relations
There are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two neighboring states had formal governmental relations between 1918 and 1921, during their brief independence from the collapsed Russian Empire, as the First Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan; these relations existed from the period after the Russian Revolution until they were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming the constituent republics of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. Due to the five wars waged by the countries in the past century—one from 1918 to 1921, another from 1988 to 1994, and the most recent in 2016, 2020 and 2023—the two have had strained relations. In the wake of hostilities, social memory of Soviet-era cohabitation is widely repressed through censorship and stigmatization. History In the Russian Empire In the Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905–1906, Armenians and Caucasian Tatars (later known as Azerbaijanis) killed each other and destro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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FIFA World Rankings
The FIFA Men's World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, first introduced in December 1992. The men's teams of the member nations of FIFA, football's world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. the rankings were led by Argentina. Eight teams (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) have held the top position, of which Brazil have spent the longest time ranked first. A points system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of all FIFA-recognised full international matches. The ranking system has been revamped on several occasions, generally responding to criticism that the preceding calculation method did not effectively reflect the relative strengths of the national teams. Since 16 August 2018, the ranking system has adopted the Elo rating system used in chess and Go. The ranking is sponsored by Coca-Cola; as su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |