# 2022–23 UEFA Nations League C

The 2022–23 UEFA Nations League C was the third division of the 2022–23 edition of the UEFA Nations League, the third season of the international football competition involving the men's national teams of the 55 member associations of UEFA.

## Format

League C consisted of 16 UEFA members ranked from 33–48 in the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League access list, split into four groups of four. Each team played six matches within their group, using the home-and-away round-robin format in June (quadruple matchdays) and September 2022 (double matchdays). The winners of each group were promoted to the 2024–25 UEFA Nations League B, and the two worst-ranked fourth-placed teams of each group advanced to the relegation play-outs.
As League C had four groups while League D had only two, the League C team that was to be relegated to the 2024–25 UEFA Nations League D was determined by play-outs in March 2024.
Originally, all four of the fourth-placed teams would have participated in the play-outs. Based on the Nations League overall ranking, the best-ranked team would have faced the fourth-ranked team, and the second-ranked team would have faced the third-ranked team. The two losing teams would have been relegated to League D, while the winners would have remained in League C.
However, due to the ongoing suspension of Russia from all UEFA competitions and to ensure that League C would still consist of 16 teams, the league allocation for the 2024–25 UEFA Nations League was changed so that only one team would be relegated to League D. Based on the Nations League overall ranking, the two lowest-ranked teams participated in the play-outs, while the other two fourth-placed teams remained in League C.
The play-out tie was played over two legs, with the higher-ranked team hosting the second leg. The team that scored more goals on aggregate over the two legs remained in League C while the loser was relegated to League D. If the aggregate score was level, extra time was played without applying the away goals rule. If still tied after extra time, a penalty shoot-out was used to decide the winner.

## Teams
### Team changes

The following were the team changes in League C from the 2020–21 season:
Incoming :
| Relegated from Nations League B | Promoted from Nations League D |
| Bulgaria  Northern Ireland  Slovakia  Turkey | Gibraltar  Faroe Islands |
Outgoing :
| Promoted to Nations League B | Relegated to Nations League D |
| Albania  Armenia  Montenegro  Slovenia | Estonia  Moldova |

### Seeding

In the 2022–23 access list, UEFA ranked teams based on the 2020–21 Nations League overall ranking. The seeding pots for the league phase were confirmed on 22 September 2021, and were based on the access list ranking.
Pot 1 :
| Pot 1 Team Rank  Turkey 33  Slovakia 34  Bulgaria 35  Northern Ireland 36 | Pot 2 Team Rank  Greece 37  Belarus 38  Luxembourg 39  North Macedonia 40 | Pot 3 Team Rank  Lithuania 41  Georgia 42  Azerbaijan 43  Kosovo 44 | Pot 4 Team Rank  Kazakhstan 45  Cyprus 46  Gibraltar 47  Faroe Islands 48 |
* 1 2 The identity of the play-out winners was not known at the time of the draw.
The draw for the league phase took place at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland on 16 December 2021, 18:00 CET. Each group contained one team from each pot. Due to restrictions of excessive travel, each group could contain a maximum of one of the following pairs: Northern Ireland and the winner of the Moldova v Kazakhstan play-out tie, Gibraltar and Azerbaijan.

## Groups

The fixture list was confirmed by UEFA on 17 December 2021, the day following the draw.
Times are CEST (UTC+2), as listed by UEFA (local times, if different, are in parentheses).

### Group 1

| Pos | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Promotion or qualification | | | | |
| 1 | Turkey (P) | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 18 | 5 | +13 | 13 | Promotion to League B | — | 3–3 | 4–0 | 2–0 |
| 2 | Luxembourg | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 7 | +2 | 11 | | 0–2 | — | 2–2 | 1–0 |
| 3 | Faroe Islands | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 10 | −3 | 8 | | 2–1 | 0–1 | — | 2–1 |
| 4 | Lithuania (O) | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 14 | −12 | 1 | Qualification for relegation play-outs | 0–6 | 0–2 | 1–1 | — |

### Group 2

| Pos | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Promotion | | | | |
| 1 | Greece (P) | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 2 | +8 | 15 | Promotion to League B | — | 2–0 | 3–1 | 3–0 |
| 2 | Kosovo | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 8 | +3 | 9 | | 0–1 | — | 3–2 | 5–1 |
| 3 | Northern Ireland | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 10 | −3 | 5 | | 0–1 | 2–1 | — | 2–2 |
| 4 | Cyprus | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 | −8 | 5 | | 1–0 | 0–2 | 0–0 | — |
* 1 2 Tied on head-to-head results. Overall goal difference was used as the tiebreaker.

### Group 3

| Pos | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Promotion | | | | |
| 1 | Kazakhstan (P) | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 6 | +2 | 13 | Promotion to League B | — | 2–0 | 2–1 | 2–1 |
| 2 | Azerbaijan | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 4 | +3 | 10 | | 3–0 | — | 0–1 | 2–0 |
| 3 | Slovakia | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | −1 | 7 | | 0–1 | 1–2 | — | 1–1 |
| 4 | Belarus | 6 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | −4 | 3 | | 1–1 | 0–0 | 0–1 | — |

### Group 4

| Pos | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Promotion or qualification | | | | |
| 1 | Georgia (P) | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 16 | 3 | +13 | 16 | Promotion to League B | — | 0–0 | 2–0 | 4–0 |
| 2 | Bulgaria | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 8 | +2 | 9 | | 2–5 | — | 1–1 | 5–1 |
| 3 | North Macedonia | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 7 | | 0–3 | 0–1 | — | 4–0 |
| 4 | Gibraltar (R) | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 18 | −15 | 1 | Qualification for relegation play-outs | 1–2 | 1–1 | 0–2 | — |

## Ranking of fourth-placed teams

| Pos | Grp | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Qualification |
| 1 | C2 | Cyprus | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 | −8 | 5 | |
| 2 | C3 | Belarus | 6 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | −4 | 3 | |
| 3 | C1 | Lithuania (O) | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 14 | −12 | 1 | Qualification for relegation play-outs |
| 4 | C4 | Gibraltar (R) | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 18 | −15 | 1 | Qualification for relegation play-outs |

## Relegation play-outs

The two worst-ranked fourth-placed teams of League C participated in the relegation play-outs to determine the team which would be relegated to League D. The relegation play-outs were scheduled on the same dates as the UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying play-offs. If at least one of the teams due to participate in the relegation play-outs had also qualified for the Euro qualifying play-offs, the relegation play-outs would have been cancelled, and the worst-ranked team in League C in the Nations League overall ranking would have been automatically relegated. However, this scenario did not occur, and the relegation play-outs progressed as scheduled.
The play-out tie was as follows, with the higher-ranked team hosting the second leg:
Times are CET (UTC+1), as listed by UEFA (local times, if different, are in parentheses).

### Summary

| Team 1 | Agg.Tooltip Aggregate score | Team 2 | 1st leg | 2nd leg |
| Gibraltar | 0–2 | Lithuania | 0–1 | 0–1 |

### Matches

Lithuania won 2–0 on aggregate and remained in League C, while Gibraltar were relegated to League D.

## Goalscorers

There were 129 goals scored in 50 matches, for an average of 2.58 goals per match.
5 goals
* Khvicha Kvaratskhelia
* Vedat Muriqi
4 goals
* Gerson Rodrigues
* Serdar Dursun
3 goals
* Kiril Despodov
* Anastasios Bakasetas
* Abat Aymbetov
* Danel Sinani
2 goals
* Iliyan Stefanov
* Andronikos Kakoullis
* Jákup Andreasen
* Jóannes Bjartalíð
* Viljormur Davidsen
* Valeri Qazaishvili
* Budu Zivzivadze
* Petros Mantalos
* Fedor Černych
* Enis Bardhi
* Shayne Lavery
* Hakan Çalhanoğlu
* Halil Dervişoğlu
* Doğukan Sinik
* Cengiz Ünder
1 goal
* Renat Dadashov
* Mahir Emreli
* Hojjat Haghverdi
* Anatoliy Nuriyev
* Filip Ozobić
* Ramil Sheydayev
* Ivan Bakhar
* Vladislav Malkevich
* Pavel Savitsky
* Valentin Antov
* Atanas Iliev
* Radoslav Kirilov
* Georgi Minchev
* Marin Petkov
* Valentin Roberge
* Marinos Tzionis
* Jóan Símun Edmundsson
* Zuriko Davitashvili
* Guram Kashia
* Otar Kiteishvili
* Georges Mikautadze
* Giorgi Tsitaishvili
* Louie Annesley
* Roy Chipolina
* Liam Walker
* Giorgos Giakoumakis
* Dimitrios Limnios
* Georgios Masouras
* Vangelis Pavlidis
* Dimitrios Pelkas
* Elkhan Astanov
* Aslan Darabayev
* Mikhail Gabyshev
* Yan Vorogovsky
* Bakhtiyar Zaynutdinov
* Valon Berisha
* Zymer Bytyqi
* Florent Muslija
* Elbasan Rashani
* Donat Rrudhani
* Edon Zhegrova
* Armandas Kučys
* Vykintas Slivka
* Leandro Barreiro
* Marvin da Graça
* Darko Churlinov
* Bojan Miovski
* Boban Nikolov
* Milan Ristovski
* Daniel Ballard
* Jonny Evans
* Josh Magennis
* Paddy McNair
* Gavin Whyte
* Matúš Bero
* Erik Jirka
* Tomáš Suslov
* Vladimír Weiss
* Adam Zreľák
* Yunus Akgün
* Kaan Ayhan
* Merih Demiral
* Serdar Gürler
* İsmail Yüksek
1 own goal
* Andrea Hristov (against Georgia)
* Graeme Torrilla (against North Macedonia)
* Aleksandr Marochkin (against Azerbaijan)
* Maxime Chanot (against Turkey)
* Bojan Miovski (against Georgia)

## Overall ranking

The 16 League C teams were ranked 33rd to 48th overall in the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League according to the following rules:
* The teams finishing first in the groups were ranked 33rd to 36th according to the results of the league phase.
* The teams finishing second in the groups were ranked 37th to 40th according to the results of the league phase.
* The teams finishing third in the groups were ranked 41st to 44th according to the results of the league phase.
* The teams finishing fourth in the groups were ranked 45th to 48th according to the results of the league phase.
| Rnk | Grp | Teamvte | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
| 33 | C4 | Georgia | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 16 | 3 | +13 | 16 |
| 34 | C2 | Greece | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 2 | +8 | 15 |
| 35 | C1 | Turkey | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 18 | 5 | +13 | 13 |
| 36 | C3 | Kazakhstan | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 6 | +2 | 13 |
| 37 | C1 | Luxembourg | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 7 | +2 | 11 |
| 38 | C3 | Azerbaijan | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 4 | +3 | 10 |
| 39 | C2 | Kosovo | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 8 | +3 | 9 |
| 40 | C4 | Bulgaria | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 8 | +2 | 9 |
| 41 | C1 | Faroe Islands | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 10 | −3 | 8 |
| 42 | C4 | North Macedonia | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 43 | C3 | Slovakia | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | −1 | 7 |
| 44 | C2 | Northern Ireland | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 10 | −3 | 5 |
| 45 | C2 | Cyprus | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 | −8 | 5 |
| 46 | C3 | Belarus | 6 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | −4 | 3 |
| 47 | C1 | Lithuania | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 14 | −12 | 1 |
| 48 | C4 | Gibraltar | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 18 | −15 | 1 |

## Euro 2024 qualifying play-offs

The four best teams in League C according to the overall ranking that did not qualify for UEFA Euro 2024 through the qualifying group stage competed in the play-offs, with the winners qualifying for the final tournament.
Key
* $^{GW}$ Group winner from Nations League C
* Team qualified directly to final tournament
* Team in bold advanced to play-offs