Semi-final wishlist

This time next week it'll all be over... apart from the shade, tea and multitudinous layers of data collection/analysis that'll keep us going over the summer.

To make things short and snappy, I have rejigged my ranking to take into account recent rehearsal footage and found the top 10 acts from each semi final. These are as follows:

                                                 SEMI 1                                                  SEMI 2

Australia Slovenia Iceland Czech Republic Portugal Greece Cyprus San Marino Georgia Belgium -- Belarus Estonia Poland Hungary Serbia Finland Montenegro

Azerbaijan North Macedonia Sweden Austria Norway Switzerland Romania Netherlands Russia Malta -- Albania Denmark Latvia Ireland Lithuania Armenia Croatia Moldova

So the countries in green are my top 10 in each semi, the ones in orange are outside my top ten, although as we know anything is possible - also remember that half of the vote is sealed on the Monday night with the jury final, so they need to be great both nights and failures have been secured in the basis of one bad show

In semi 1, even though San Marino and Belgium are in my top 10, they are looking like the least likely of that bunch to get through purely on performance and vocals. Portugal could be a little bit too avant garde for casual Eurovision viewer and Slovenia may well be too quiet and inwards. I feel that there is only a good argument for Finland and Montenegro NOT qualifying so I think that literally any of the other countries could qualify too (although I would rather they didn't!)

Semi 2, for me, is much more clear cut when it comes to who *should * qualify. Out of the songs in orange, Albania and Denmark are the two countries that probably have the best chance of sneaking through, mainly due to the countries voting in that semi. So many countries here are on a bit of a knife edge - Austria, Norway, North Macedonia, Romania - because of lack of neighbours or because their song/staging could be misconstrued, misinterpreted or misunderstood.

It's still very much an open contest! There is also the added complication that the big 5 have drawn their half of the final and all of them bar Germany are in the second half. That, plus the fact Israel are already in position 14, that means that there are only 8 slots left in semi 2 for the rest of the qualifiers fto fight over, and given that Spain and Italy are fan faves they could be given a huge boost by the producer led draw ! 

I'll do another round up on Friday once we know all the finalists AND the grand final draw.