Best Team Performances, Nov 20: Huge wins in Euro 2020 Qualifying
Italy secured the biggest win of this round of Euro 2020 Qualifying, and one of the most comprehensive in their history, after demolishing Armenia 9-1 on Monday. They had seven goalscorers in total: Ciro Immobile (2), Nicolo Zaniolo (2), Nicolo Barella, Alessio Romagnoli, Jorginho, Riccardo Orsolini, Federico Chiesa. The size of the scoreline sums up the Azzurri's dominance overall, as they had 71% possession and completed 547 out of 608 passes. They had to fight for some of the ball, too, though, and actually won more tackles and aerial duels than Armenia.
Roberto Martinez has made Belgium into one of the most free-scoring teams on the planet, and they continued banging in the goals this week with a 6-1 win over Cyprus, with Kevin De Bruyne and Christian Benteke scoring two each, and Yannick Carrasco getting one, with an own-goal thrown in for good measure. The Belgians surprisingly went behind in the 14th minute, but responded emphatically to lead 4-1 at the break. They were comfortable thereafter, completing 665 out of 730 attempted passes.
With Virgil van Dijk away from the team due to personal reasons, Georginio Wijnaldum captained the Netherlands to a comfortable 5-0 victory versus Cyrpus, with him scoring a hat-trick on a memorable personal night. The night will also be noted for the first start of AZ forward Calvin Stengs, who contributed two assists for the goals of his captain. The Oranje had 22 shots on goal compared to the nine of Estonia, and enjoyed two-thirds of ball possession. A pass completion rate of 91% and a whopping 921 touches sum up their control over proceedings.
Any victory against woeful San Marino needs to come with an asterisk, but Russia still got the job done in professional fashion against a team who have conceded no less than 50 goals in qualifying. Five of them came in this match as the Russians had five different scorers - Daler Kuzyaev, Sergei Petrov, Aleksei Miranchuk, Aleksei Ionov, and Nikolay Komlichenko. As expected, the Russians dominated from start to finish with an incredible 82% of possession and 760 passes, compared to the 172 of San Marino. If it wasn't for San Marino goalkeeper Aldo Simoncini making a few saves, this could have been more.
Another minnow humbled now as Switzerland defeated Gibraltar 6-1 to top Group D by one point ahead of Denmark. The Swiss won the match with their feet up, with five different scorers contributing to the win. Loris Benito was the star of the show as he scored one and assisted two others, while centre-foward Calvin Itten scored twice. Possession of 75% was earned by the viistors, who also completed more than treble the amount of passes of Gibraltar. The scoreline could have and should have been bigger, as they fired 37 shots on goal overall.