This afternoon (12:00 cet) the draw for EURO 2016 in France will take place in Nice. The pots are: Pot 1 Spain Germany Netherlands Italy England Portugal Greece Russia Bosnia and Herzegovina Pot 2 Ukraine Croatia Sweden Denmark Switzerland Belgium Czech Republic Hungary Republic of Ireland Pot 3 Serbia Turkey Slovenia Israel Norway Slovakia Romania Austria Poland Pot 4 Montenegro Armenia Scotland Finland Latvia Wales Bulgaria Estonia Belarus Pot 5 Iceland Northern Ireland Albania Lithuania Moldova FYROM Azerbaijan Georgia Cyprus Pot 6 Luxembourg Kazakhstan Liechtenstein Faroe Islands Malta Andorra San Marino Gibraltar Hopefully some interesting matches! Gibraltar is a newcomer. With around 30,000 citizens, Gibraltar is the least populous of the UEFA member nations. Indeed, the lack of a suitable stadium in the country means that Gibraltar will play their home qualifiers in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. That was where they staged their very first international, on 19 November 2013, and things got off to an encouraging start as Allen Bula's side held Slovakia to a goalless draw at Estádio Algarve.
If Qatar is full of fail and FIFA WC 2026 is outside of Europe, can Euro 2020 get fill with invitee teams from around the world? (I dont want star a new thread for a weird idea)
As we already know the expansion of European Championshipto 24 team is done simply for financial purpose. The whole qualification process is just a joke. Out of 53 teams 24 will qualify. It is becoming a mockery of football. You do not need to be a braniac to see that all top seeded nations will make it through and low ranked ones will finish last as usual. The only positive aspect of it is the Rd 16 playoff addition. Which still can be a drag since lots of weak nations will qualify to the final tournament.
The Euros are becoming a joke....especially the qualifying process. Have a preliminary round to get the field down to 48 teams. Then seed the 48 remianing teams using FIFA rankings for a two-legged playoff for the 24 spots in the actual tournament. Voila, qualifying is taken care of in a week, and the big clubs can stop complaining about FIFA qualifying dates disrupting league schedules.
But there could be countries not in the Top 24 in the rankings used for seeding who have no chance at qualifying if drawn against Spain but who could still finish second or third in a group and qualify in the real format.
Any different format of qualifying might end up with a different outcome, sure. But we're facing 304 qualifying matches and group games just to get the field down to 16 teams, followed by 15 knockout matches worth watching.
To be precise it should be 296 games before the Round of 16 (excluding "qualifiers" France plays in): 240 qualifiers in 8 groups of 6 20 qualifiers in 1 group of 5 36 Euro 2016 Group Stage games
Not really. There are obviously more chances for a team like Iceland or Scotland to qualify, but they probably will still fail. Teams at the level of Turkey, Slovakia, Serbia, Czech Republic, etc will still struggle to qualify and its not exactly a disaster if we have to see them in the field of 24.
Sounds like a lot of effort for nothing, but the alternative is 300+ friendlies. If you look at the Euro 2016 qualifying schedule, it is much cleaner than past Euro qualifying tournaments. No 5-team groups which lead to friendlies to fill-in empty int'l days. No qualifiers in August either. We have 9 equal-sized groups with competitive matches occurring around the same time, resulting in a more fair process. What do we lose? We lose potentially seeing a top Euro nation get eliminated on a plastic field in Azerbaijan on a Friday afternoon when everyone is at work. Now we have to watch all but 1 of the top teams get eliminated on the big stage in France.