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PARIS: Portugal finished its Euro 2024 qualifying campaign with a 100-percent record by beating Iceland 2-0 on Sunday, after Serbia booked their place at next year’s finals in Germany and Romelu Lukaku scored four goals for Belgium.
Bruno Fernandes and Ricardo Horta netted the goals for Roberto Martinez’s Portugal, with Cristiano Ronaldo not on the scoresheet, to end with 10 wins from 10 matches in Group J.
The 2016 winners will be among the favorites for the title in what could be the 38-year-old Ronaldo’s last major tournament.
Slovakia finished eight points behind Portugal in the second qualifying place after a 2-1 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in Zenica.
Luxembourg, who will head into the play-offs, were a further five points adrift after closing out an impressive group-stage showing with a 1-0 success in Leichtenstein.
Earlier Sunday, Serbia qualified for the first time as an independent nation, after four previous failures to get to the main event, with a 2-2 draw against Bulgaria.
The Serbs finish second in Group G behind Hungary who snuffed out any hopes Montenegro had of progressing by beating them 3-1 in Budapest.
Lukaku scored four goals as Belgium finished with a 5-0 thrashing of Azerbaijan.
Roma striker Lukaku extended his record tally of international goals for Belgium to 83, with all of his goals coming in a remarkable first half in Brussels.
He opened the scoring in the 17th minute by converting a Jeremy Doku cross, before Eddy Israfilov was shown a second yellow card seven minutes later to leave the Azeris with a mountain to climb.
Lukaku fired home shortly afterwards and then headed in Wout Faes’ delivery to complete a hat-trick.
He rounded off his scoring spree of four goals in 20 minutes before being replaced by Lois Openda at half-time.
The Belgians took their foot off the gas in the second period but Leandro Trossard added a fifth in the 90th minute from another Doku assist.
Sweden ended a miserable campaign, in which they failed to qualify for a European Championship for the first time since 1996, with a 2-0 win over Estonia in the other game in the group.
