Slovenia finished in 3rd place of Group H which is not enough for them to secure a spot in the 2014 World Cup even though they made a fairly late challenge at the top positions; it was just too late for them and had to settle to stay 2 points behind Iceland with 15 points.
A fairly disappointing start of their World Cup qualifiers saw them losing the initial 4 matches and only managing to secure 3 points out of the possible 15. Losing against Switzerland, Norway, Albania and Iceland saw them scrapping the bottom zone of Group H during the midterm stages of the tournament.
Slovenia finished in 3rd place of Group H which is not enough for them to secure a spot in the 2014 World Cup even though they made a fairly late challenge at the top positions; it was just too late for them and had to settle to stay 2 points behind Iceland with 15 points.
A fairly disappointing start of their World Cup qualifiers saw them losing the initial 4 matches and only managing to secure 3 points out of the possible 15. Losing against Switzerland, Norway, Albania and Iceland saw them scrapping the bottom zone of Group H during the midterm stages of the tournament.
It wasn’t until their 2nd leg against Iceland that they started finding their drift and the charge for the top spots of Group H started off with a convincing 4-2 triumph against the team they had already lost to a few weeks previously.
The march continued going on with a lonely goal from Kevin Kampl that gave them the victory against Albania as they were slowly finding their rhythm and tried to climb a few spots in their group.
Slovenia went on to win their 3rd consecutive match by overcoming Cyprus with a scoreboard of 2-0 that saw Milivoje Novakovic and Josip Iličič finding the back of the net which gave Slovenia a vital victory and maintained their hopes of advancing into the next round of the tournament alive.
The dream remained alive when a phenomenal performance from Milivoje Novakovic saw Slovenia crush Norway 3-0 with the 34 years old forward scoring a hat trick and with only 1 match remaining in the group stages; another triumph would secure their spot into the 2014 World Cup.
Switzerland received Slovenia at the Stade de Suisse and the home team had already advanced further through the group stages it did not stop them from going all out and Granit Xhaka’s 2nd half goal destroyed Slovenia’s run of 4 consecutive wins which just wasn’t enough for them to advance to the grandest stage of them all.