Bosnia & Herzegovina will welcome Slovakia to Grbavica this Sunday evening for what is now a meaningless game over in Group J with the away side having already secured a spot at Euro 2024 and the home team far from out of the running.
It's been a campaign of qualifying to forget for Bosnia, as they head into this game with just nine points from nine games and only three left on the table. This leaves them with a 10-point gap on Slovakia in the qualified spot of second and adrift of Portugal in first by 18 points. In fact, the only thing that keeps Bosnia from sitting bottom of the table is the dreadful winless form shown by Liechtenstein.
Worse yet, the nation heads into this game off the back of a terrible defeat to Luxembourg. The absences of Edin Dzeko and Milan Pjanic have clearly been felt for Bosnia, as they lost 4-1 to Luxembourg last time out in what will go down as one of their worst-ever results.
Renato Gojkovic scored late on in that game, as Nihad Mujakic scored an own goal too. Bosnia are also now behind Luxembourg by five points.
Despite a victory for Luxembourg that day bringing them into third in Group J, Slovakia are still sitting clear of them i second place and with a gap of four points with only three left on the board. This means qualification is secured, as they have lost only two games and won six of their nine matches.
Slovakia have qualified off the back of a win over Iceland during the week which saw Juraj Kucka equalise in the first half before Ondrej Duda gave his country the lead from the penalty spot. Lukas Haraslin would scored twicw in the second half to hand his Slovakia a 4-2 and a place in Germany next year.
