Women's Euro 2025 qualifying: Scotland face Serbia, Slovakia and Israel

  • Published
Nicola Docherty playing for ScotlandImage source, SNS
Image caption,

Nicola Docherty and her team-mates must finish in the top three of their Euro 2025 group to progress to the play-offs

Scotland have been drawn in a group with Serbia, Slovakia and Israel in qualifying for Women's Euro 2025.

The group games will take place between April and July this year, with the sides playing each other home and away.

Because Scotland are in League B, their route to the final has to be via the play-offs after the group stage.

The top three countries from the four groups in League B will play against each other to progress to final play-off games against League A and C sides.

Those six teams to progress from League B will meet the winners of matches between the teams finishing third and fourth in League A - which is filled with the top-ranked teams in Europe - and the five group winners and three best-ranked runners-up in League C.

The winners from those seven games in November and December this year will progress to the finals in Switzerland next summer.

Scotland will be expected to finish in one of the top-three positions in the group given they are ranked 25th in the world, 11 places above Serbia and well in front of Slovakia in 49th and Israel in 69th.

Before the draw at Uefa headquarters in Nyon in Switzerland, the 51 teams hoping to reach next year's tournament were split into three leagues - A, B and C - with the composition of those leagues determined by the results in the 2023-24 Nations League.

The top two sides from each League A group will automatically qualify for Euro 2025 and those eight countries will be joined by the seven play-off winners as well as hosts Switzerland in the tournament from 2 July 2025.

Scotland qualified for their first major tournament when they made it to Euro 2017 and although they went out at the group stage they memorably beat Spain thanks to a Caroline Weir goal.

They followed that tournament debut by reaching the 2019 World Cup but then failed to qualify for Euro 2022 or last summer's World Cup - losing to the Republic of Ireland in a play-off.

They will go into Euro 2025 qualification after a miserable Nations League campaign under Pedro Martinez Losa during which they did not win one match in a tough group alongside England, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The groups in full

League A

Group A1: Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Finland

Group A2: Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Czech Republic

Group A3: France, England, Sweden, Republic of Ireland

Group A4: Germany, Austria, Iceland, Poland

League B

Group B1: Switzerland, Hungary, Turkey, Azerbaijan

Group B2: Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Israel

Group B3: Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Malta

Group B4: Wales, Croatia, Ukraine, Kosovo

League C

Group C1: Belarus, Lithuania, Cyprus, Georgia

Group C2: Slovenia, Latvia, North Macedonia, Moldova

Group C3: Greece, Montenegro, Andorra, Faroe Islands

Group C4: Romania, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Armenia

Group C5: Albania, Estonia, Luxembourg

Around the BBC

Related internet links

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.