Finland finished their League C Group 1 campaign with a 7-2 win over San Marino on Sunday, the biggest scoreline of the group, and it changed nothing. Adrian Svanbäck scored a hat-trick, Joel Pohjanpalo added two, and Leo Walta and Håkans got the others, yet Finland end third on 10 points, level with Belarus and stuck behind them on head-to-head despite a goal difference of +10 against Belarus' +3.

Two games, zero goals, the whole group

The table was decided in early autumn. Finland and Belarus drew 0-0 in Helsinki on Sept. 29, and a week later in Budapest, Artem Shumanskiy beat Lukas Hradecky after 16 seconds for a 1-0 Belarus win. Finland had 71.6% of the ball that night and only one shot on target, and Hradecky had to save a Zakhar Volkov penalty just to keep it at one.

That is the gap: Finland scored freely against everyone else in the group and failed to find the net in 180 minutes against the one rival that mattered. Under Nations League rules, head-to-head results come before overall goal difference when teams finish level on points, so the 7-2 counted for pride and little else.

Belarus lost and still got the spot

Belarus did not even need to win on Sunday. They were beaten 2-0 by Albania in Budapest, with Armando Manaj scoring after 28 minutes and setting up Elseid Hysaj on 57, on the night Hysaj won his 105th cap. Albania could have had more: a Qazim Laçi penalty was called back by VAR for offside, and Kristjan Asllani hit the crossbar.

Albania top the group with 15 points and are promoted to League B. Belarus finish second on 10 and take the play-off route, while Finland, who still had promotion in play when the November window began, stay in League C.

San Marino scored twice, which says something too

Nanni's two goals for San Marino were a footnote in a lopsided game, but they also capture Finland's autumn: plenty of attacking output, not enough control when it counted. Svanbäck's hat-trick and Pohjanpalo's brace show a forward line that clearly works against deep, weaker defenses. The problem was never scoring goals against teams like San Marino. It was the two games against a compact Belarus side that sat in and let Finland have the ball.

For Finland, the lesson goes straight into the next qualifying cycle: a +10 goal difference looks good on paper, but in a group this tight, beating the direct rival is what decides things.