Since the Euros expand to a 24-team final tournament beginning in 2016, the qualifying tournament will obviously be quite different. There are 53 members nations competing for 23 births. The qualifying draw is scheduled for February (2014) meaning that a decision on the format will probably be announced fairly soon. How do you think UEFA should structure the qualifying tournament? Possible options: option #1 5 groups of 7 + 3 groups of 6 => 8 groups. Most teams play 12 qualifying games while some play 10. The top 3 in each group qualify except for the worst 3rd-place team. Potential flaw(s): - Seven team groups are a bit awkward as they require 14 "matchdays". option #2 8 groups of 6 + 1 group of 5 => 9 groups Almost every team plays 10 qualifying games while a few play 8 games. The top 2 in each group plus the best 3rd-place team qualify directly. The other 8 3rd-place teams playoff to determine the final 4 spots. Potential flaw(s): - Now that up to 3 teams can qualify from a single group, are 5 teams (one of which could be a real minnow) in one group enough? option #3 With the addition of Gibraltar, there are now more minnows than ever. Solution? Add a preliminary knockout phase to reduce the number of teams in the qualifying group-stage to, say, 48. Phase 1: knockout stage involving the 10 lowest-ranked UEFA teams. Phase 2: group-stage. 8 groups of 6 teams. Every team plays 10 games. The top 3 in each group qualify except for the worst 3rd-place team. Potential flaw(s): - Lack of competitive matches for the 5 teams that get eliminated in phase 1. option #4 Same as option #3 except phase 2 has 6 groups of 8 teams to create more matches between strong teams. Every team plays 14 games. The top 4 in each group qualify except for the worst 4th-place team. Extra quirk: your final position in the group determines your seeding for the Euro 2016 final draw. Potential flaw(s): - 14 matches is a lot. Discuss.
UEFA probably isn't going to do groups with more than six teams. They had FIFA eliminate the August friendly matchdays. I think Option 2 is most likely, and I like the top third place team qualifying with the rest going into playoffs better than every third place team except one qualifying. Your potential flaw is the five team group, but the worst eight teams will go one in each group of six, so the worst team in the group of five could be bad but won't be Andorra or San Marino.
The only concern I see with option 2 is one group having both Liechtenstein and San Marino. However, my greater concern is the expansion of teams for the finals.
Option 2 sounds the best from the list. Though i think it was wrong to expand the euro's to 24 teams.
Platini had this to say back in May to the Daily Mail's Martin Samuel (link <- click) Why expand to 24 teams? How would you make qualifying more interesting? The blogger at football-rankings.info does a swell job of explaining what exactly Plantini has in mind:
Idea 1 Excluding the host, the top 15 ranked teams qualify automatically, the remaining 38 teams divided into 2 groups of 4 and 6 groups of 5, top team in each group qualifying. Each team plays 6 or 8 games, which is just enough. The top ranked teams can use the time for friendlies which are usually more entertaining and competitive than qualifiers against semi-pro teams. Idea 2 Top two teams qualify automatically, then 17 groups of 3. The advantage is that it reduces the schedule with only 4 games each. This leaves more room for club football which is generally more entertaining and higher quality. Idea 3 A first division of 11 teams, then two second divisions of 11 teams, then two third divisions of 9/11. Each teams plays each other in their division once, with five home games and five away. The top division all qualify, plus the top seven in each second division. Winner of the top division is league champion of Europe. Bottom eight of top division play off against top four of each second division for promotion/relegation, same with bottom four in each second division with top four in each third division. This method has a lot of games, but they'll be competitive and entertaining.
So in other words, he's desperate for British TV money and ******** the standard of the competition? England were crap in 2007/2008 and would have tarnished the tournament.
I like the idea. 24 teams creates an extra knock out round and lets face it thats what tournaments are all about. We get 8 extra knock out matches compared to previous EC's. I'm all for it. Group stage with 16 wasnt all that anyway and then you have just 8 teams left and it feels a bit underwhelming compared to a WC. Now with 24 teams group stage wont improve ,I admit. but its not much worse imo.
I like option 3. The lowest ranked teams are: 45 Malta 46 Liechtenstein 47 Northern Ireland 48 Wales 49 Armenia 50 Estonia 51 Faroe Isl. 52 San Marino 53 Andorra 54 Gibraltar It may sound a bit crap that some won't get to play the big boys. On the other hand, teams like those on the bottom 4 might have a shot at winning some games. 4 of those spots would be up for grabs, so 2 groups of 5 with the top 2 going forward? Might seem a lot of games for those progressing, but many games could be done even during the previous EC, as it's very unlikely that a qualified team would rank so low (although that might be a problem in case it does happen). On the other hand, it's a bigger problem if it's a knockout and some teams only ever play 2 games as they wouldn't have a chance to change their ranking.
I don't like teams qualifying automatically. Note that Spain, Germany, Netherlands, etc. might rather have to qualify because if they just played friendlies during that time their FIFA Ranking could fall (like what happened to Brazil before the Confederations Cup) and possibly cost them a seed in the World Cup. I also don't like 20 of the teams needing to be promoted before they have a chance the qualify. In qualifying for World Cup 2010, Slovenia was among the bottom 20 teams for the draw and they qualified when UEFA has 13 World Cup spots and 23 Euro 2016 spots from qualifying if there is one host (therefore making it easier to qualify for the latter). For Idea 2, some of the second place teams would qualify, and it would be a big advantage to whoever finished second in San Marino's group because goal differential would matter. How about five groups of 5 and seven groups of 4 with the host and every top two team except the worst second place team qualifying? Groups of 5 take as many matchdays as groups of 6, but this would eliminate the playoffs for the last spots. If you wanted to make every group have 4 teams, the bottom ten teams could play each other for five spots in the group stage and then the group stage would have 48 teams.
I agree. A prelim group-stage among the minnows makes more sense than a prelim KO round. It's not kosher though to play int'l matches during a World Cup, but there is time to avoid such a conflict. The preliminary group-stage can begin as early as March 2014. Two games each in March, two in early June '14 and two in Sept '14. So there is time for 6 prelim round games, before the real qualifying tournament begins in Oct '14.
I doubt they'll revert back. But I dunno.... I think we should take a wait-and-see approach. For all we know, a 24 team final tournament might be better. If you look at the Euro qualifiers being played today for example, it leaves a lot to be desired. There is Ukraine v England and then a whole bunch of fodder. So its not like the current format is so perfect. (Yes I know these are WC qualifiers, but the Euro WC qualifiers are almost identical to the Euro championship qualifiers)
Agreed. Actually, this is another reason why I like option 3. I understand that to get rid of the fodder is exactly why we have qualifiers but overall, I think the average qualifying game would be more meaningful if there was an earlier round. Even the games within that preliminary round will have meaning and be competitive, although they might not be very interesting from the neutral standpoint.
option 3 for me but 2 is what they'll use. My problem with option 4 is I don't really want more international football. I have less problem with the expansion of the Euro's to 24. People argue its a higher standard than the World Cup (at least in the group stages) and this may be true. but should a regional competition really be stronger than it's international counterpart and should it be has hard to qualify to? I quite like the idea that countries like Wales, Armenia, Bosnia and Slovakia will get a much better chance to strut their stuff on big stage, after all those sides have players as good as anything produced by the entirety of North America and Asia.
Plus it's good for European football and football in general. When you have Portugal, England and France struggling to qualify something is not right. The obvious answer is that competition got stronger and that expansion is necessary. FA's from Scotland, Latvia, Ireland and Sweden? approached UEFA at UEFA Congress in January 2007 about a possible expansion - what we have now is 24 teams. I think FA's from Austria and Czech Republic also backed the idea.
Split the 53 teams into 2 competition phases/routes ala Champions League. Top 32 teams in UEFA go into 8 groups of 4... Top 2 advance. Best 7 3rd place teams go to a playoffs with teams from other phase see below. Bottom 21 teams in UEFA go into 7 groups of 3... Group winners advance to the playoffs. The playoffs are between the 7 best 3rd placed teams from Route A and the Winners of Route B.
If it's done this way, a typical group in Route A would look like: Italy, Bosnia, Turkey, Ireland And a typical group in Route B would be: Scotland, Georgia, Faroe Islands.
It's most likely to be option 2, but the alternative for me would be: Stage 1: 53 teams. Sept '14 - March '15. 12 groups of 4 + 1 group of 5. 13 group winners qualify. Heavy weighting on results to decide seedings for 2nd stage. Stage 2: 40 teams. Sept '15 - Nov '15. 10 groups of 4. 10 Group winners qualify. Examples of what a stage 1 group might look like: Spain/Denmark/Ireland/Luxemburg Switzerland/Serbia/Bulgaria/Lithuania. Examples of what a stage 2 group might look like: Hungary/Wales/Poland/San Marino France/Austria/Israel/Cyprus. Obviously I'm very much in favour of the extension of the competition. I think it's good for football in the middle ranked nations, and good for the competition to have an extra knock-out round.
The problem is the 1 group of 5 because that requires 10 matchdays and there won't be that many matchdays from September 2014 to March 2015. The only way it could work is if teams in that group only played each other once.
Ah, I forgot that you would need the additional match days for the odd numbered group. There are 2 more days in June, but that would make the organisation of the second stage very tight indeed. You could give Spain, as holders, automatic qualification, or arrange a knock-out competition for lowest ranked sides to eliminate one of them; but I'm not sure either of those solutions is great. Still, logistically closer to making it work than Platini
For that one group of 5 you could use the int'l breaks in August and February. Or has FIFA ditched that August break?
I believe they have been ditched. See http://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/Wor...IMC2013-2018FIFAversionv28May2013_Neutral.pdf