\n<\/p>\n
Sweden<\/strong>\u2019s faint hopes of qualifying for the World Cup were all-but extinguished as the 2018 quarter-finalists lost 1-0 against Kosovo<\/strong> in Stockholm. Fisnik Asllani fired a first-half effort that allowed the Kosovans to complete a remarkable double over their opponents and boost their own hopes of booking at least a playoff place.<\/p>\n Sweden \u2013 who featured \u00a3125m man Alexander Isak up front alongside Viktor Gy\u00f6keres <\/strong><\/em>\u2013 remain rooted to the bottom of Group B on one point. Isak, who played another 90 minutes after doing the same in the 2-0 defeat to Switzerland on Friday, failed to find the target as he continues to work his way back to fitness following his summer move from Newcastle to Liverpool. Leaders Switzerland<\/strong> dropped their first points of the campaign as they were held to a goalless draw by Slovenia<\/strong> in Ljubljana.<\/p>\n Group D leaders France<\/strong> dropped their first points of the campaign as they drew 2-2 with Iceland<\/strong> in Reykjavik. Didier Deschamps took his side into the game knowing they could seal their ticket to the finals if they won and second-placed Ukraine failed to beat Azerbaijan in the other match.<\/p>\n But the night did not go to plan as Victor Palsson gave the hosts a 39th-minute lead, and despite two goals in five second-half minutes from Christopher Nkunku and Jean-Philippe Mateta putting France ahead, Kristian Hlynsson\u2019s 70th-minute effort gave Iceland a point.<\/p>\n A win would not have been enough anyway for Deschamps\u2019 men as Ukraine<\/strong> nudged to a 2-1 win over Azerbaijan<\/strong> in Krakow.<\/p>\n Slovakia<\/strong> stay level on points with Germany at the top of the group after second-half goals from Adam Obert and Ivan Schranz completed an unconvincing 2-0 win over Luxembourg<\/strong> in Trnava.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/span><\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In Wales\u2019s group, North Macedonia<\/strong> were held to a 1-1 draw by Kazakhstan<\/strong> in Skopje.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sweden\u2019s faint hopes of qualifying for the World Cup were all-but extinguished as the 2018 quarter-finalists lost 1-0 against Kosovo in Stockholm. Fisnik Asllani fired a first-half effort that allowed the Kosovans to complete a remarkable double over their opponents and boost their own hopes of booking at least a playoff place. Sweden \u2013 who<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[4907,130,8647,16589,16590,11546,8920,448,4484,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-27861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-brink","9":"tag-cup","10":"tag-defeat","11":"tag-elimination","12":"tag-kosovo","13":"tag-qualifiers","14":"tag-qualifying","15":"tag-roundup","16":"tag-sweden","17":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}