Malta yesterday achieved an historic qualification to the Elite Round of the UEFA U-17 Championship after Charlie Scerri's team were confirmed as one of the two best third-placed sides in the qualifying campaign.

The Maltese youngsters had been on the verge of qualifying before yesterday's final round of matches from Group 9 but Norway's 2-0 win over Italy removed any lingering doubts about their passage to the Elite Round.

Thanks to their final-day success, Norway pipped Italy, last season's UEFA U-17 semi-finalists, to second place on head-to-head record after both finished with four points. Greece needed a late equaliser in a two-all draw with Moldova to top the group and secure qualification.

According to competition regulations, the top two teams in each group and the two sides with the best record against the top pair in their cohort qualify for the Elite Round. Italy finished third but their head-to-head record against the top two teams in their group was inferior to that of Malta and Finland, who placed third in Group 5 with six points from three matches.

On Tuesday, Malta ended their Group 8 commitments with a goalless draw against Andorra to finish third in the group with four points, two adrift of joint-leaders the Netherlands and Northern Ireland.

However, Malta's impressive 2-1 win over the Dutch last weekend left them with a good chance of progressing as one of the two best third-placed teams. This was confirmed yesterday with the conclusion of Group 9.

The qualifying campaign wraps up tomorrow with the final two matches from Group 1 but the outcome of these games will have no bearing on Malta's fate.

This is the first time that Malta's U-17 team have gone through the first qualifying round of the UEFA Championship and they achieved it by collecting their biggest number of points ever in such competition.

Scerri and his young guns will now be looking forward to the next phase of the tournament whereby the 28 qualified teams will be split into seven groups of four teams each.

Matches from this phase will be played in March with the winner of each section joining hosts Liechtenstein in the final tournament in May 2010.

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