A group with exciting development, capped off with a brilliant decider in the last match between Romania and Denmark. Romania were the early leaders, but Denmark found their shape during spring 1989 and climbed to the top spot, only to lose it all on the last day.

The story of this group was also a story of the impact of two star players. With Miodrag Belodedici, Romania got off to a perfect start in autumn 1988, securing two wins against Bulgaria and Greece. At the same time, Denmark still looked shaky with their “new” national team and only managed to get two points from their first meetings with Greece and Bulgaria. After the exit of Belodedici, Romania started to look more insecure. They were surely the better side again vs Greece (a) and Bulgaria (h), but could have lost more than the one point. With Denmark it was the opposite trend: with the return of Morten Olsen to the national team, they regained self-confidence, first beating Bulgaria in Sofia and then hammering Greece in Copenhagen. The final encounters between the two teams saw neither Belodedici nor Olsen take part: the latter retired from playing in summer 1989. The teams won each their home fixture and so Romania scraped through to Italy’90.

Did the best team progress? Romania surely impressed during their qualification and played some of the best football seen in the UEFA zone: free-flowing, attacking football, looking particularly dangerous on swift counterattacks. But the Danish side as of 1989 was also a good one. They would have done well in Italy’90. Too bad that they got off to a slow start when the players still looked to blend in. The draw against Bulgaria in Copenhagen was fatal.

Greece, who had endured slaughter on their travels, would finish third on the back of that final game in which they managed to avenge the 4-0 drubbing in Varna, scoring the only goal of the game through a placed finish from midfield man Nioplias. Bulgaria clearly had the higher potential of these two, but they were second best in matches against the big two, even if they, somewhat fortunately, held Denmark to that draw in Idrætsparken. The Bulgarian FA had sacked Boris Angelov halfway through the qualification, and they had looked slightly improved when making the away trip to Romania in Ivan Vutsov’s first game back in charge. In a riot game in the coastal city of Varna, four late goals had seen Bulgaria finish Greece off for their first win, and then they’d followed that up with an, alledgedly, dreary performance in Athens.

At home, Greece had put up strong resistance, not losing either of their three qualifiers, and holding both Denmark and Romania to well-deserved draws. They had players who relished a battle, but also players who would switch off once morale was allowed to drop. They’d disgraced themselves in Copenhagen during that awful 7-1 defeat. In Bucharest, they had simply faced a much, much better team. In Bulgaria, they’d had three players sent off by the time Stoichkov netted the hosts’ fourth of the evening. Three managers had done their best to enhance their reputation during the qualification, but it looked likely that they would need further improvement to provide a threat for their next qualification campaign. Still, that win in their final match had boosted them somewhat in that they would finish third rather than prop the table up.