Italy scraped a draw against the Republic of Ireland to join Germany, Denmark and Serbia as the latest European teams to secure 2010 World Cup places in this weekend’s qualifiers.
This quartet join already-qualified England, Spain and the Netherlands, leaving two automatic berths from the continent still up for grabs heading into Wednesday’s last throw of the South Africa dice.
Russia, beaten 1-0 by ten-man Germany in Moscow, and the Republic of Ireland, are among the teams assured of places in November’s two-leg play-offs.
France, beaten on penalties in the 2006 final by Italy, are also in the play-offs after routing part-timers the Faroe Islands 5-0 to book second place in Group Seven behind Serbia, who trounced Romania by the same score line.
Bosnia-Herzegovina secured a play-off berth with a 2-0 win in Estonia to make sure of their position as runners-up to the Euro 2008 champions. In other action, Switzerland boosted their prospects of making it to the finals with a 3-0 defeat of Luxembourg.
Group Three is too close to call with Slovakia on 19 points, two ahead of Slovenia, with the same gap back to the Czech Republic.
In the African qualifiers, Cote d’Ivoire qualified for the 2010 by drawing 1-1 in Malawi on Saturday and Cameroon moved closer to joining them with a 3-0 triumph over Togo.
Chelsea striker Didier Dogma scored just 120 seconds after coming on in the second half to give the Ivorian ‘Elephants’ an unassailable seven-point Group E advantage.
Ivory Coast have 13 points, Burkina Faso six, Malawi four and Guinea three and attention now turns to who will finish second and third after the final fixtures next month and qualify for the 2010 African Nations Cup in Angola.
Egypt kept alive hopes of overtaking Group C pacesetters Algeria with a fortunate 1-0 victory in Zambia courtesy of a mid-second half strike from midfielder Hosny Abd Rabou. — AFP
