Ireland head coach Vera Pauw has cried foul after accusing her World Cup 2023 qualification rivals of a lack of fair play after her side were the victims of a pre-planned stitch-up by leading pair Sweden and Finland.
But she insisted that the machinations of both Group A favourites will make her side doubly determined to upset the odds and make history by qualifying for their first major international tournament, which will be held in Australia and New Zealand.
Even before the fixture dates were officially finalised, Pauw launched an astonishing broadside at both the Swedes and the Finns for exploiting their status as top and second seeds respectively in an attempt to engineer a favourable schedule.
Ireland will finish their campaign away to Finland, their likely rivals for a play-off spot behind Sweden.
Had Pauw not agreed to this, Finland and Sweden were prepared to conspire that their two fixtures would take place after their games against Ireland.
Pauw has already made an informal complaint to UEFA but it remains to be seen if the football authorities mirror their approach to male competitions.
After decades of wrangling in the aftermath of qualification draws, fixture schedules for World Cup and European Championship qualification draws are now selected randomly by computer to avoid accusations of bias.
This might have happened had the bickering Group A rivals not finally come to an arrangement but Irish dissatisfaction clearly lingered.
“I don’t want to criticise others but the planning wouldn’t have been my planning,” says Pauw, whose side will also face minnows Slovakia and Georgia in the year-long campaign which begins next September.
“You need to make sure the fixtures against the competitors, they are right.
"We had the situation that you had to accept the home game against Finland but otherwise we would have lost all our other slots.
“Before the meeting, and you can write about this, they had taken the last matchday even before the draw, they had agreed that if they drew each other, this is what they would do.
“And because they are pots one and two, there was nothing to do about it, they just said it.
“And that means that every competitor, if you do not fight, their fixtures amongst each other will be after all the others. So we would have had to play Finland twice, that was the set-up, before they even started to play Sweden.
“I have reported it already to UEFA because it is unfair and it has to stop. If you want to have fair play, then you have to open yourself to fair play.
“And it’s not to ‘do what I want and not give in’. Now the Finland away game is in between the two Sweden and Finland games.
"So we were put into a no-win situation with that.”
Ireland’s lesser status in the international game was clearly a factor as the two group heavyweights jockeyed for position, an explanation Pauw accepted but could not condone.
“Yeah but it is unfair and I have never experienced it before. Their answer was that they did it the last time also.
"But I think UEFA should stop the scenario that the pot one and pot two teams can play each other at the end of the campaign.
"It is very unfair competition, very unfair.
“I have mentioned it informally to UEFA and nothing will happen now because the rules are set. It is nothing against the rules, they have the right to do that.
“I have tried to appeal to their feelings, that you can’t let one country give in and let another take what they want.
“But I hope by mentioning it, for the next campaign, they will take action because this just cannot happen. I have had many, many draws but I have never had this happen to me.
"And I’m very surprised. Because the ones that did it, I rate very highly.”
Only the winners of the groups automatically progress while the three best-ranker runners-up earn a bye into the second round of the play-offs, where they will meet the three sides to come through one-legged play-offs among the remaining six runners-up.
A draw will then pit these six sides against each other in one-legged games, and the two sides with the best record across both this play-off game and the initial group phase will qualify directly for the finals.
The side with the third-best record gets another reprieve, and will break off into a separate play-off system involving all of the continental confederations.
European qualifying draw: Group A: Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Slovakia, Georgia Group B: Spain, Scotland, Ukraine, Hungary, Faroe Islands Group C: Netherlands, Iceland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Cyprus Group D: England, Austria, Northern Ireland, North Macedonia, Latvia, Luxembourg Group E: Denmark, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, Malta, Montenegro. Group F: Norway, Belgium, Poland, Albania, Kosovo, Armenia Group G: Italy, Switzerland, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Lithuania Group H: Germany, Portugal, Serbia, Israel, Turkey, Bulgaria Group I: France, Wales, Slovenia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Estonia
