The UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying Group I was one of the nine groups to decide which teams would qualify for the UEFA Euro 2016 finals tournament. Group I consisted of five teams: Portugal, Denmark, Serbia, Armenia, and Albania, where they played against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format.
The top two teams, Portugal and Albania, qualified directly for the finals. As third-placed Denmark weren't the highest-ranked among all third-placed teams, they advanced to the play-offs, where they lost to Sweden and thus failed to qualify.
France were also partnered with the five-team Group I, which enabled the 2016 tournament hosts to play centralized friendlies against these countries on their 'spare' dates. However, these friendlies did not count in the qualifying group standings.
Source: UEFA Rules for classification: Qualification tiebreakers Notes:
The Serbia v Albania match was awarded as a 3–0 win to Albania, and Serbia were also deducted three points, after the match was abandoned at 0–0 because home fans invaded the pitch and attacked Albania players when a drone carried a pro-Albanian flag over the stadium.
Matches
The fixtures were released by UEFA the same day as the draw, which was held on 23 February 2014 in Nice. Times are CET/CEST, as listed by UEFA (local times are in parentheses).
There were 39 goals scored in 20 matches, for an average of 1.95 goals per match.
5 goals
Cristiano Ronaldo
3 goals
Zoran Tošić
2 goals
Nicklas Bendtner
João Moutinho
Adem Ljajić
1 goal
Bekim Balaj
Berat Djimsiti
Shkëlzen Gashi
Ermir Lenjani
Mërgim Mavraj
Armando Sadiku
Robert Arzumanyan
Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Hrayr Mkoyan
Marcos Pizzelli
Pierre-Emile Højbjerg
Thomas Kahlenberg
Simon Kjær
Jakob Poulsen
Yussuf Poulsen
Lasse Vibe
Ricardo Carvalho
Fábio Coentrão
Nani
Miguel Veloso
Aleksandar Kolarov
Nemanja Matić
1 own goal
Mërgim Mavraj (against Armenia)
Levon Hayrapetyan (against Serbia)
Kamo Hovhannisyan (against Albania)
Discipline
A player was automatically suspended for the next match for the following offences:
Receiving a red card (red card suspensions could be extended for serious offences)
Receiving three yellow cards in three different matches, as well as after fifth and any subsequent yellow card (yellow card suspensions were carried forward to the play-offs, but not the finals or any other future international matches)
The following suspensions were served during the qualifying matches:
Team
Player
Offence(s)
Suspended for match(es)
Albania
Ansi Agolli
vs Serbia (14 October 2014) vs Denmark (4 September 2015) vs Serbia (8 October 2015)
vs Armenia (11 October 2015)
Armenia
Hovhannes Hambardzumyan
vs Albania (29 March 2015)
vs Portugal (13 June 2015)
Portugal
Tiago
vs Armenia (13 June 2015)
vs Albania (7 September 2015)
Portugal coach Fernando Santos was to serve an eight-match touchline ban for unsporting conduct towards the match officials when he was in charge of Greece against Costa Rica in the 2014 FIFA World Cup round of 16 match. The ban was temporarily suspended by the Court of Arbitration for Sport until the final appeal. On 23 March 2015, the CAS ruled that his ban should be reduced to four games, with two suspended during a six-month probationary period, meaning he missed Portugal's matches against Serbia (29 March 2015) and Armenia (13 June 2015).
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