Quality football awaits Nigerians as Euro qualifier, friendlies, Nations League return

Nigerian football fans are in for good times from today when matches of the UEFA Nations League, European friendlies, and European Championship qualifiers kick off across the continent.

The matches will be broadcast live and in HD on StarTimes football channels.

13 European friendly matches will be aired today and tomorrow, four qualifying matches tomorrow, while the Nations League resumes on Saturday.

StarTimes advised its subscribers to stream the matches and other choice content on four devices simultaneously at no extra cost by pairing their decoder with StarTimes ON app on three different mobile phones.

If anybody wants to check the competitiveness of the UEFA Nations League, they need only look at the three stand-out fixtures of the next match days in the competition.

Portugal versus France, Belgium versus England, and Spain versus Germany feature five of the top six teams in the world (and Germany is surprisingly not amongst them).

In Group A2, the world’s top-ranked team, Belgium, are at home to England, knowing well that a victory in Leuven on Sunday, will all but guarantee Roberto Martínez’s side a place in the final tournament, which only the four group winners of the A-league qualify for.

The tournament’s joint top scorer, Romelu Lukaku, who is also Belgium’s top scorer with 55 goals, despite being only 27, opened for his side in London in the first leg.

Marcus Rashford and Mason Mount, however, turned things around, to give England the upper hand in the group, which they, however, threw away with a home defeat against Denmark in the very next game.

In Group A3, two of Europe’s in-form strikers – Antoine Griezmann and Cristiano Ronaldo – face each other in Lisbon, with both France and Portugal evenly poised at the top of the table with 10 points each ahead of the game on Saturday.

The first leg between the two ended in a goalless draw, which leaves the question of which team will end up group winners wide open.

Germany, who have seen their place in the world ranking slip as their dominant position in European football has diminished, were thrown a life-line in their attempts to top Group A4 by Ukraine.

A stunning 1-0 victory for Ukraine against Spain in their last match, could well see Germany go into their game against Spain on Tuesday, November 17 with a chance to overtake Luis Enrique’s team.

Germany is at home to Ukraine, while Spain travels to Switzerland in their penultimate games, before facing each other in Seville.