Euro

While England’s League A campaign has gone well so far, Wales’ has been trickier.

In a tough group with Portugal, Denmark and Norway, Wales have picked up three points from four games after beating Norway 2-1 in Cardiff.

With Portugal already qualified for the last eight, Wales will need close to maximum points in their final matches against Norway and Portugal to stand any chance of making the last eight.

A third-place finish would put them in a play-off to avoid relegation in March, while coming last in the group would guarantee a drop down to League B.

Like England, Scotland have three rounds of fixtures remaining. They face Slovenia at Hampden Park on Tuesday.

Going into that tie, they are third in League B1 but only behind Slovenia on goal difference. A win for Sebastien Pocognoli’s side would put them second behind Switzerland heading into the November break.

With Scotland’s penultimate match coming against bottom of the table North Macedonia, wins in their next two games would all but seal a place in the top two heading into their final match against Switzerland, who are expected to clinch the automatic promotion spot.

Northern Ireland have had a successful international break with two wins, two draws and no goals conceded in their four matches in Group B2.

They sit top of the group by a point, with their remaining matches against bottom side Georgia and second-place Hungary.

Should they beat Georgia and Hungary fail to beat Ukraine in November’s first round of fixtures, they will guarantee top spot and promotion. A win for them and Hungary doing the same would mean the two sides face off in a promotion-decider in the final round of games.

The Republic of Ireland are third in Group B3 following five points from their first four matches.

Their remaining two fixtures are against the top two teams Austria and Kosovo. Wins in both would guarantee a top-two finish and would also put them in a strong position to win the group, depending on goal difference and the result of Austria’s meeting with Israel.

The ultimate aim for O’Neill is to lead his young squad to a first major tournament since 2016 when the next Euros roll around in 2028.

Their return to the second tier in the Nations League has been successful so far, with Charles scoring a 99th-minute winner in Georgia before the team showed their character with a goalless draw at home to Hungary.

The players definitely looked tired in the closing stages of the draw, which can be put down to the 5000-mile return trip to Tbilisi, but they held their own against Dominik Szoboszlai’s side.

Before that, Northern Ireland had kept Paris Saint-Germain winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia quiet in the opener.

While Ukraine do not have the individual star power of the other teams in League B2, O’Neill knows they are still a dangerous side.

He described them as favourites on Friday night, and pointed to the fact that manager Andrea Maldera had made 10 changes between their opening 1-0 win in Hungary and the goalless draw with Georgia in their second game.

“Ukraine’s strength is in their collective as a team, rather than what we faced against Georgia with Kvaratskhelia and Hungary with Szoboszlai, who are top European players.

“I think that Ukraine have many players that have potential to be on that level and go to the big, big clubs in Europe.

“We haven’t highlighted any one individual, but we’ve looked very closely at how they play, with the ball and without the ball, and I believe their strength is in the collective of the team.”

Published on
21/09/2026 – 11:46 GMT+2

Volkswagen, Europe’s largest automaker, is no longer among the eurozone’s blue chips.

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Index provider Stoxx confirmed the change in its annual review at the start of September, and it came into force before trading began on Monday, with Finnish telecoms group Nokia returning to the index and French utility Engie joining.

Dutch information-services group Wolters Kluwer was also dropped.

The removal is mechanical rather than a judgement, as the index is weighted by free-float market value, and Volkswagen’s shrinking valuation no longer cleared the threshold.

However, the consequences are real, as funds that track the benchmark must now sell their Volkswagen holdings, adding to pressure on a stock already under strain. Stellantis suffered the same fate last year.

Volkswagen shares have fallen almost 30% since the start of the year and are down over 6% since last Monday’s open, trading at roughly €76 at the time of writing.

A profit warning to match

The timing could hardly have been worse.

On Friday, Volkswagen flagged around €10 billion in one-off charges and cut its operating margin forecast for 2026 to no more than 1%, down from a previous range of 4% to 5.5%. Analysts had expected 4.1%.

More than €6 billion of the charges stem from a writedown at Porsche, in which Volkswagen holds a 75.4% stake, after the sports car maker lowered its medium-term expectations.

Porsche has been hit hard by American tariffs and weak Chinese demand for foreign luxury brands, and managed a margin of just 1.1% last year.

A further €2 billion or more covers expanded early retirement schemes, impairments in China and the planned sale of Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary and automotive manufacturing plant located in the northwest German city of Osnabrück.

The company warned of “further deterioration in the market environment, especially in China, as well as an accelerated shift in demand in favour of battery-electric vehicles.”

The warning came two weeks after it agreed its largest-ever restructuring, doubling planned job cuts to 100,000 and halving its model line-up.

However, not everyone reads the numbers as a collapse.

Stripping out the one-off items, Volkswagen puts its underlying margin at around 4%, and it kept its cash flow and liquidity forecasts unchanged.

Deutsche Bank, which rates the shares a buy with a €115 price target, said it believes “the headline significantly overstates the deterioration in the underlying business.”

The bank does not expect the pain to end there as it wrote that “additional restructuring charges simply confirm that the transformation process is very expensive and complex […] we expect more to follow over the coming months.”

Volkswagen’s third-quarter results are due on 29 October.