The Finnish men’s basketball team has never survived the World Cup through qualifiers. In this story, Sports opens up how the World Cup qualifier system works.
Finland’s balance before the last qualifying round of the World Basketball World Cup qualifiers is three wins and one loss. The setup for Thursday’s sold-out Sweden match in Espoo is delicious.
If Susijengi defeats Sweden, he will start in the qualifying round with great positions, number one in his starting block – and at the same time the victory will immediately bring peace of mind to the new head coach. Lassi Tuoville.
The stake in the Swedish match is big, as Finland is already losing below the Blue Yellows. The second loss would be a bad setback for the World Cup dreams if Sweden were to advance to the playoffs – as it now seems.
Winning the World Cup through qualifiers would be better than ever, even with six more important qualifiers ahead.
Before this week, Susijeng has a strong grip on the place of the World Cup continuation block in its starting block, where the top three of the starting blocks will reach. Croatia have lost three of the four games and are out of the danger zone before the two final rounds.
However, Croatia’s setup is heightened by the fact that the team gets Utah Jazz to help with the final games Bojan BogdanovicinLA Clippers Ivica Zubacin and an ex-NBA gambler Mario Hezonjan.
Continued against Germany, Israel and Estonia?
Before the last two rounds, Finland, Slovenia and Sweden are the strongest candidates together in the D-block for the top three (Germany, Israel, Estonia) in the six-team World Cup continuation block, the top three of which will reach the 2023 World Cup tournament.
In the Fiba rankings, Germany is 11th, Israel 42nd and Estonia 49th. Perhaps surprisingly, the D-block jumbo is Poland (13th in the rankings), which can still move on.
The opponents’ Finland connections bring their own tone to possible follow-up games. The head coach of Germany is a Canadian-Finnish Gordon Herbert. Estonia will be piloted by Susijeng’s former assistant coach Jukka Toijala. Israel and Poland, on the other hand, are in the same starting block as Finland in the European Championships in September.
It is therefore possible that Susijengi will face opponents in the European Championship in the first qualifying round at the end of August just a week before the start of the European Championships.
This week’s matches will also be of great significance for possible follow-up games, as the start-up match results will be included in the starting block.
The final game of the Susijeng starting block will be played against the strengthened Croatia on Sunday, July 3, at 9 pm in Rijeka. However, the matter will not be resolved until Sunday.
In theory, there is also the option that all four corpuscles in Group C would end in three wins and three losses. Of course, it requires Sweden to overthrow Finland and Croatia in Slovenia’s away on Thursday, June 30, and Slovenia to defeat Sweden and Croatia in Finland’s final matches on Sunday, July 3.
The point differences in the basket ratios are still quite small at this point (Finland +10, Slovenia -7, Sweden +4 and Croatia -7), so two possible losses in the final games could even derail Susijeng in the worst case of the block and completely out of the qualifiers.
Slovenia strengthened with Doncic and Dragic
If Finland were to lose the remaining two qualifiers in the first round and even if Susijengi reached the top three in terms of points, Finland’s further dreams would be thinnest if Slovenia happened to be fourth and the matches played against it were knocked out of the playoffs.
In that case, Susijengi would go to the playoffs with one win (from Croatia) and three losses (twice to Sweden and once to Croatia) after playing 40% of the playoffs. In principle, this scenario is perhaps the least likely.
Finland has been lucky in the sense that both Winning Slovenia matches were held in the same qualifying window without the NBA players – let Susijengi play a stunning basket in those matches. Slovenia finishes fifth in Fiba rankings with NBA stars Luka Doncic and Goran Dragic.
The World Basketball Championships will be played from 1 to 17 September 2023. The Games will be held in Asia, when, for the first time, the World Cup will be hosted by more than one country.
The World Cup is played in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. Spain, which won the 2019 tournament, will take the tournament as the reigning world champion. In addition to the end of August, further qualifiers will be played in November and at the end of February. 12 countries from Europe will enter the World Cup of 32 teams.