Turkiye beat Kosovo 1-0, and Sweden beat Poland 3-2, as winners secure latest FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifying spots.<\/p>\n
Published On 31 Mar 202631 Mar 2026<\/p>\n
Turkiye ended a 24-year wait \u2060to \u2060qualify for the World Cup by beating Kosovo 1-0 in their \u2060playoff final, sealing a return to football\u2019s biggest stage \u2060for the first time since 2002.<\/p>\n
Forward Kerem Akturkoglu scored the only goal in the 53rd minute to settle a \u200ctense contest on Tuesday in Pristina, where the hosts had been hoping to reach their first-ever World Cup.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Turkiye, ranked 25th in the world, had fallen short in qualifying campaigns over \u2060the past two decades \u2060and arrived under pressure to deliver, with coach Vincenzo Montella overseeing a squad blending emerging talents \u2060and experienced internationals.<\/p>\n
For Kosovo, ranked 79th and playing \u2060in front of a \u2060sold-out crowd, the defeat brought an end to a remarkable run that had taken them \u200cto the brink of a historic debut at a major tournament, less \u200cthan \u200ca decade after joining FIFA and UEFA.<\/p>\n
Gyokeres edges Sweden past Poland<\/p>\n
Sweden beat Poland \u20603-2 \u2060to book their ticket to the World Cup, as Viktor Gyokeres struck two minutes from \u2060time to decide a frantic qualification playoff final.<\/p>\n
Anthony Elanga\u2019s opener for Sweden was cancelled out \u200cby Nicola Zalewski\u2019s equaliser, but Gustaf Lagerbielke\u2019s 44th-minute strike restored the hosts\u2019 advantage and ensured they entered the break ahead.<\/p>\n
Despite Karol Swiderski \u2060drawing the visitors \u2060level again shortly after the interval, Gyokeres capitalised on a late goalmouth \u2060scramble to side-foot home the winner.<\/p>\n
The \u2060result earned Sweden \u2060a spot in Group F for the 2026 World Cup alongside the Netherlands, \u200cJapan and Tunisia, marking their first appearance at the \u200ctournament \u200csince 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkiye beat Kosovo 1-0, and Sweden beat Poland 3-2, as winners secure latest FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[63,4118,85,46,8509,47,43,4436,2224,105,4056,1582,101640],"class_list":{"0":"post-368335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-europe","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-kosovo","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-poland","16":"tag-sport","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-sweden","19":"tag-turkey","20":"tag-world-cup-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}