I am none of them but I will try a prediction anyway...
A1:
- hard to guess... often teams who just become world or euro champions have some kind of "post-tournament-crisis" , just like Germany which lost 0-2 to Poland after WC 2014 and I remember Spain losing 0-4 to Portugal after one of their tournament wins. Nevertheless France must win this... Germany is still in trouble, the team atmosphere seems to be very "poisoned". Netherland could benefit from this but then again I saw their squad nominations... Babel, Elia, Sneijder
what is going wrong with this formerly great footbal nation?
A2:
- Mmh, no surprise here. Belgium showed the world what they are able to achieve. Switzerland is very very decent and they might even beat Belgium on home ground but probably mess it up in a cold night in Reykjavik. For Iceland it will be harder and harder to compete on this level and we dont know yet if Erik Hamren can continue the success work of Hallgrimsson. The team is still the same but technically they are obviously very limited. Lets hope for windy rainy and cold matches in Reykjavik so they can end up on the second place at least
A3:
- Italy will rise like a phoenix, they probably have desire for revenge after their historical disaster... I'm not convinced by Portugal anyway. Poland relies too much on Lewandowski
A4:
- Holy moly, what a group! This is gonna be very tight... but England is doing very well in friendlies/qualifying and they are petty self-confident now after their little fairytale this summer. Croatia is still a shaky team after all but they usually look good against Spain, whose demise is gonna continue.
B1:
-On the one hand this group looks very boring for me, on the other hand it is incredibly balanced. This prediction is more like a desire than a prediction. Ive got no idea here but I support Czech Republic as theyve got the next Petr Cech standing between the goal posts and his name is Jiri Pavlenka. About Slovakia I wouldnt have a clue if there wasnt Hamsik ... Ukraine is a team with many average players. I followed them as they were in Iceland's WC qualification group and they looked rather bad.
B2:
- Sweden has a great chemistry and spirit. Russias football still lacks talent, they were a one-hit-wonder pushed forward by the home crowd. Turkey... is something. Average team that can now and then impress when theyve got a special day.
B3:
::ulst - I hope our neighbours will finally get their shit together. Potentially theyve got a very strong side and the first results with their new coach looked good already. They should win the group. Bosnia doesnt have a good squad depth and Northern Ireland overperformed long enough.
B4:
- Denmark is by far the best team. And even though they didnt prove in World Cup they can actually play very good football... the brazilians of scandinavia if you wanna phrase it like this. Ireland and Wales know each other from last qualfication campaign. Ireland I think is a little better
C1:
- maybe an unpopular prediction but I think people still use to underestimate Albania. They played in Euros 2016, they couldnt realistically qualify for WC with Spain and Italy in their group but at least they ended up above Israel in the final ranking. Moreover they benefit a lot from their diaspora in Switzerland. Scotland is irrelevant.
C2:
- I also think Greece will slowly but surely recover and in this group they should somehow win. Interestingly, Finland and Hungary were their opponents in that awful Euro 2016 qualification when they ended up last... but this will never ever happen to Greece again. Finland on second place might be a surprise... now after their former captain Moisander retired from international stage they hardly have any player with experience on a high level, apart of goalkeeper Hradecky. But, Hungary isnt that much better and the last couple of matches in the qualification looked good-ish, maybe theyve got a shot here to end up on 2nd place. Estonia will finish on last place, there are easily 3-4 better teams in Division D, if not more..
C3:
- Slovenia will win this group cause they might have a tad more quality than Norway, but Lagerbäck will stabilize this Norwegian team and they can look into the future a little more optimistically. Bulgaria is one of the few teams in Europe from which I literally couldnt name any current player. Bulgaria is just... there. Cyprus is weak.
C4:
this is rather a strong group. Serbia is in a wrong division but they will correct this mistake without further problems. Montenegro is performing well as a team even though they lack individual quality. Will be a hot derby against Serbia. Romania is alright but they havent been in a good shape lately. Lithuania can only defend but they dont know what to do with the ball.
D1:
maybe some people dont know but Georgia has actually some interesting talents in the squad for their standards and I remember them playing decent football against Germany in the Euro 2016 qualifying. I guess they can win this group. The level of Kazakhstan football isnt that bad considering that Astana made the UCL group stage in 2015-16 and only lost two matches and last season they qualified for R32 in Europe League... but nevertheless they could be better if they had a little more international experience. Good enough for second place though. Latvia is in awful shape but theyre still good enough to beat the likes of Andorra
D2:
Luxemburg is definitely on the rise and I think they have big plans for the future. They beat Belarus before and they will do again. Ive got no opinion about Moldova. Sherrif Tiraspol is a decent team, but I feel like Belarus will beat them. San Marino is not competitive, even on this level.
D3:
- Kosovo winning this group is everything but a surprise. They needed some time to harmonize as a team but qualitywisely they are a level above the other teams here. Milot Rashica will destroy the opponents by himself. What can be said about Kazakhstan is also true for Azerbaijan. The level of club football is alright but the players should gain more experience abroad.
D4:
::gi
- I'm too tired now to analysze this group ... Armenia is an obvious number 1 cause theyve got 2-3 exceptional players. Macedonia is an obvious second place... and yes, little surprise: I think Gibraltar can beat Liechtenstein. In Qualifications Gibraltar looked worse than all other teams just because they are not clever enough yet to defend well against big teams cause they're still too naive.. but I think their can actually play more powerful attacking football than the likes of San Marino and Andorra.
