[Ranger99]

I was thinking it might be a good idea to have a soccer system that is similar to hockey, with several levels of World Tournaments. In hockey, there's the WC involving Canada, US, Russia, Sweden, Finland, etc at the elite level, and then below it teams like France and Germany, and below that teams like Israel, China and Spain, and finally at the bottom are Iceland, Armenia, Turkey, Mexico, Ireland.

It allows lower level teams to compete and win at their own level.

EURO will expand from 16 to 24 teams in 2016. But what about creating 3 tiers?

Tier 1: 24 teams
Tier 2: 24 teams
Qualifying Tier: Remaining teams

In tier-1, teams would be divided into 4 groups with 6 teams each. The top 4 teams will move to Sweet-16. The bottom 2 teams in each of the 4 will go into the relegation playoff.

In tier-2, those that make it into the Quaterfinals will to get into the playoff round as well. (They could win tier-2 championship and play their own tournament as any other, until someone wins.)

Then over the course of 4 years, the 16 teams will compete home and away in a total of 30 games (15 opponents, 2 games vs. each). The top 8 teams will then compete in the first tier vs. the elite teams in the subsequent EURO.

In the second tier, the bottom 8 teams of Tier-2 which won't make the Sweet-16 round will have to compete against the Qualifying tier for the right to stay in Tier-2.

============================

ADVANTAGES

1. More organized international games that actually matter.

2. A chance for lower level, but still solid teams to compete against equal opposition rather than getting hammered by Italy and then hammering away at Faroe Islands.

3. Countries that are too small to build 9 major stadiums to host the EURO would be able to host a lower level tournament.

4. Lower teams could participate in exciting football, no less so than, say, the Asian Championship, which is no better than Euro's second tier.

5. Less likely that a team like France or England will miss a tournament because of one or two bad games, or because they got into a "Group of Death" where some good team has to get knocked out.

6. Reason for a middling teams to compete strongly rather than just being happy to be in the tournament. They would be desperate to stay in tier-1 or would try desperately to get to the quarterfinals of tier-2 so that they could get a chance to move up.

7. 40 teams would have a realistic chance to make the first tier. 24 would actually play in the first tier and the Sweet-16 of the second tier would all have a realistic chance since they would only need to win one game to get into the playoff round. Going into the tier-2 tournament, almost all the teams, maybe 44-45 out of 48 would have at least some hope of advancing into the playoff round.

8. This would improve the quality of soccer because teams would have a reason to play, would play more, would play against equal opposition.

[Caesar]

Thread moved to UEFA forum.

[goliath74]

Why?

If your pain is that the Dutch and the English miss the finals sometimes? Sorry, if they do someone else looks better in their stead.

[Ranger99]

That's not it. Why do people always think so? I was actually thinking more about middling teams like Ukraine, Poland, Scotland, Israel, Sweden. This would benefit them the most.

Either they will make Tier-1 or they will spend 4 years playing very competitive games against other middling teams - and playing competitive games against teams similar in quality to you is what helps teams improve the most.

Plus, countries like Iceland, Moldova and Cyprus will never have a chance to host the regular EURO, but they would have a chance to host Tier-2 Euro.

Originally Posted by goliath74

Why?

If your pain is that the Dutch and the English miss the finals sometimes? Sorry, if they do someone else looks better in their stead.

[Alex_K]

First: having two tiers of 24 teams doesn't make much sense - UEFA has only 53 members.

But there would be no benefit to anyone anyway - the smaller nations would lose out big time on the missing revenue from home games against big teams. And especially with a 24 teams championship teams like Sweden or Ukraine etc. wouldn't benefit either - they have a pretty good chance to qualify anyway. Playing each other for all eternity won't help improve Scotland and Norway anymore than playing against Italy would, and it's not as if the mid-tier teams you mention can't compete. Not to mention that fans from Sweden (ok, they would be among the top-24 anyway but you used them as an example...) won't be that thrilled to play only minnows.

A tournament for the 25th (and lower) placed teams in UEFA wouldn't make sense financially - TV income won't be great (all the big nations won't be showing it, and you don't get that much for the domestic rights in Latvia or so), there wouldn't be many travelling fans either. So you would have to have relatively poor or rich but very small countries having to host a tournament for 16 teams which is likely to lose money and people won't care that much about (even in hockey nobody wants to win the second tier championship - Germany plays mostly in the top tier tournament, but whenever they get relegated it's only about promotion. The "title" for the B World Championship itself is completely meaningless). And Iceland or Moldova couldn't host a tournament that size even if it was a second tier tournament - unless you want to play 40 games in the same stadium (or maybe 2 or 3 stadia, depending on the country).

[Ranger99]

How the second tier works out is debatable, but the point was to have a second tier. Obviously it won't be as good as the first tier in terms of money or fame or anything else, but it's b etter than nothing.

I'd prefer that Norway play vs. Finland than that they don't play at all. At least going for the second tier championship gives you something to achieve.

And once you are good enough, you can play in the first tier anyway. It's not really creating second tier INSTEAD of the the first tier, it's IN ADDITION to the first tier.

No matter how little you get from a competitive Latvia - Wales match, it's still more than what you will get if the two teams don't play at all.

And creating the playoff round is the same as having qualifiers, except even the losers will have somewhere (tier-2) to play at the end of the qualifiers.

So yes, you are right. Tier-2 won't be as good as Tier-1. But it's better than nothing.

Originally Posted by Alex_K

First: having two tiers of 24 teams doesn't make much sense - UEFA has only 53 members.

But there would be no benefit to anyone anyway - the smaller nations would lose out big time on the missing revenue from home games against big teams. And especially with a 24 teams championship teams like Sweden or Ukraine etc. wouldn't benefit either - they have a pretty good chance to qualify anyway. Playing each other for all eternity won't help improve Scotland and Norway anymore than playing against Italy would, and it's not as if the mid-tier teams you mention can't compete. Not to mention that fans from Sweden (ok, they would be among the top-24 anyway but you used them as an example...) won't be that thrilled to play only minnows.

A tournament for the 25th (and lower) placed teams in UEFA wouldn't make sense financially - TV income won't be great (all the big nations won't be showing it, and you don't get that much for the domestic rights in Latvia or so), there wouldn't be many travelling fans either. So you would have to have relatively poor or rich but very small countries having to host a tournament for 16 teams which is likely to lose money and people won't care that much about (even in hockey nobody wants to win the second tier championship - Germany plays mostly in the top tier tournament, but whenever they get relegated it's only about promotion. The "title" for the B World Championship itself is completely meaningless). And Iceland or Moldova couldn't host a tournament that size even if it was a second tier tournament - unless you want to play 40 games in the same stadium (or maybe 2 or 3 stadia, depending on the country).

[Ranger99]

Oh, and it's not true that right now countries like Moldova can't host even a minor tournament. Worst case, it could be a joint bid between two small countries with 3-4 mid-sized stadiums each. You don't need 80,000 fan buildings. If they have 5 buildings with 20,000 each plus one more with 35,000, that's enough. In a joint bid, that becomes very easy.

Iceland may have been a reach, but certainly countries with a couple million people or more could definitely host a Tier-2 tournament, either alone or at worst together with another small country.

[Alex_K]

Originally Posted by Ranger99

Oh, and it's not true that right now countries like Moldova can't host even a minor tournament. Worst case, it could be a joint bid between two small countries with 3-4 mid-sized stadiums each. You don't need 80,000 fan buildings. If they have 5 buildings with 20,000 each plus one more with 35,000, that's enough. In a joint bid, that becomes very easy.

Moldova doesn't have a single stadium with a capacity over 20.000. The three Baltic states haven't one either, as has Albania. Belarus has one, Cyprus has one, Slovenia has one, Finland has one... and those are some of the bigger countries you would expect in a tournament like that. Either you would have those countries to build oversized stadia, or hold the tournament in stadia in the 10k range. The countries you listed in your previous post, like Ukraine, Sweden, or Bulgaria, Romania etc. could probably host such a tournament, but you couldn't really count on them being in the second tier (and those are countries that might hold the regular Euro anyway sometime in the future).

[Alex_K]

Originally Posted by Ranger99

I'd prefer that Norway play vs. Finland than that they don't play at all. At least going for the second tier championship gives you something to achieve.

Well, but both Norway and Finland do play in qualifyiers - a few additional games in a minor cup tournament won't help them much (keep in mind that all of their players are professionals, some playing in England, Germany, etc. - it might help teams made out of amateurs, like San Marino etc. to play more competitive games, but I'm not sure if this applies to pretty decent teams you can beat a top side on a good day already anyway). And qualifying for a tournament is an achievment too - especially with the 24 teams Euro coming you will see them play the Euro tournament any other cycle from then on, even under the current system. Keep in mind, 24 teams is almost half of all UEFA members. Considering that there are quite a few relatively small nations in UEFA you will have maybe 35 serious contenders for 24 spots from now on.

[Ranger99]

The whole point is that countries would build to promote soccer. Each Baltic state builds a pair of 20,000 stadiums, and then they can host the tournament with an all-Baltic host. Maybe Finland will join all or some of them.


Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Cyprus can come up with 2-3 countries to host it.

Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan can host together.

Belarus and Moldova could do it, maybe alone, maybe with Hungary or Romania or Poland if their soccer quality drops a little. These are all borderline teams and in any given generation, they can drop deep into the second tier.

Ultimately, this would promote the building of many more stadiums and the development of players in a competitive environment.

Originally Posted by Alex_K

Moldova doesn't have a single stadium with a capacity over 20.000. The three Baltic states haven't one either, as has Albania. Belarus has one, Cyprus has one, Slovenia has one, Finland has one... and those are some of the bigger countries you would expect in a tournament like that. Either you would have those countries to build oversized stadia, or hold the tournament in stadia in the 10k range. The countries you listed in your previous post, like Ukraine, Sweden, or Bulgaria, Romania etc. could probably host such a tournament, but you couldn't really count on them being in the second tier (and those are countries that might hold the regular Euro anyway sometime in the future).