EURO 2016: Things to know about Group A

The Euro 2016 draw on Saturday pitted England against Wales and Germany against Poland in two spotlight groups at the championships.

In the end, Germany produced enough to win the group.

Interestingly, Bastian Schweinsteiger could face his Reds team-mate Paddy McNair after World Cup winners Germany were drawn against Northern Ireland in Group C, alongside Ukraine and Poland. But since lifting the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, Germany has had a checkered record.

That said, England won all ten of its qualifying matches and drawing Russian Federation from Pot 2 is a bonus: coach Leonid Slutsky is rebuilding a side that almost didn’t make it after Fabio Capello’s spell in charge (something England know all about too).

But Germany’s defence will need to be wary of Lewandowski, the top scorer in qualifying with 13 goals, who has been in rampant form for Bayern Munich.

Of the debutant nations, Iceland might be the happiest: facing Portugal, Hungary and Austria gives the minnow (it has the smallest population, 320,000, of any European participant) a chance of reaching the knockout round.

Group E could be the most hard to get one of the top two places however with Belgium and Italy taking on Republic of Ireland and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Sweden.

“We are the favorites and we want to win the group”, said German coach Joachim Low.

France will also face Albania once more, having been drawn alongside the Balkan nation during qualifying, despite the results of those matches not counting towards the final standings.

Next year’s tournament in France, the first to have 24 teams, will feature a new second round that includes the best four third-place finishers.

Benzema is the leading scorer among all current France internationals with 27 goals from 81 caps, but he has been charged with complicity to blackmail his teammate Mathieu Valbuena in relation to a sex tape.

Benzema and Valbuena tore the Swiss apart that day, but the case is now threatening to tear the national team apart. “For now he’s not available for selection, (but) I don’t know what will happen in six months’ time”.

The elephant not in the room is Michel Platini.

The hosts will get the 15th edition of the tournament underway against the Romanians at the Stade de France on 10 July.

The draw ceremony for the European Championships has kicked off in Paris with a musical journey through the culture of the host nation France. The case centers on FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s approval of $2 million of FIFA money that Platini got in 2011 as backdated salary.