Impact of Nations Leagues (UEFA original, Concacaf) on World Football? [Multiple R]

On the other hand, now it will be more important to actually win your group (especially in league B). Some teams that finished 2nd (or even 3rd) in their League B group in the 2018-19 NL will still get a chance to compete in the League B qualifying playoffs since the top team in their group will qualify directly. That may even be true for League C runners-up.

So the total importance of the group stage increases (granted that greater importance gets stretched-out over more games). I also don't see there being that many dead rubber games. I mean, chances are either you'll be competing for first or trying to avoid relegation at least through the first 5 matchdays (and probably the last match too). But yeah... does suck not to see Germany relegated.

 

Its not confirmed, just rumored.

 

I was going to say, UEFA qualiying for 2022 is still a matter of conjecture.

 

Yeah, that would make sense. If that's the format, it means promotion from League B to A has real meaning. As does not relegating Iceland, Croatia and the likes from League A. Everyone from league A is essentially guaranteed a playoff spot as a minimum, before WC qualifying even begins.

 

Not necessarily - I expect the format would be far more likely to be:
10 Group winners advance
10 Runners-up + 2 third placed teams with the best ranking in the Nations League go to play-offs.
That has the "advantage" that there is no cross-group ranking to worry about, just rank the 3rd placed teams by their nations league standing.

It still might be hard for the League A teams that finish 3rd to miss out, but this prevents the (in my opinion unacceptable) situation where a 4th placed team in a group might advance to the play-off instead of the third placed team from the same group, just because of the nations league.

J

 

Gotta say, I wouldn't be a big fan of that format. 1) more complex than it really needs to be; 2) you still have cross-group ranking - its just done in the NL rather than the WCQ.

First place teams qualify directly, all second place teams go to playoffs seems neat & tidy, and also something people are familiar with.

I guess I don't see that unacceptable at all. The difference between 3rd and 4th in a group would usually be super minor. Instead of splitting hairs, why not determine things through the NL rather than judging by who failed less badly in WCQ? Keeping in mind that its only for a playoff spot.

 

It seems to me that UEFA nations league is a money grab or an excuse to get the big national teams who have missed the tournament recently to have yet another chance. Like allowing 24 teams was not enough.

 

It was a money grab by the UEFA. All the spoils of interesting friendlies went to the two countries involved. Just imagine how much both the KNVB, French FA and DFB earned from friendly matches between Germany, France and the Orange team. Now the UEFA sets it up as a NL confrontation and sells it worldwide. They know these Orange-Germany-France clashes immediately draw fans to their tv set. The matches themselves proved being the spectacular shows fans anticipate from those countries.
They just parasite on the sporting goodwill of the soccerfans hunger for those matches.

 

They still get the money, but because now it's a tournement the matches sell all over the world generating money for the UEFA. You really think the UEFA could pass a NL concept that robbes the big National teams FA's from their money.
The scam is that former friendlies now sell as competitive matches on the global market.

 

The real scam was making fans pay to watch friendlies, or to interrupt the club football calendar for meaningless int'l friendlies. The less of that, the better.

 

So they stick another lable on it and then it's better?

 

Label, structured format and links to the Euros and World Cup do make it better, yes.

 

Nope. Friendlies were ment by teams to practice tactics, test players/slot in new players to prepare for the meaningfull games. So with this change the calendar for nat. teams matches gets clogged with another series of matches you cannot ignore to win. When are the teams supposed to make their practice runs then?
It's a moneygrab by the UEFA at the cost of the health of the top players as these already without this extra shit are overloaded with matches.
It's getting time the Fifpro and the EU set a maximum number of matches a pro out of health concerns is allowed to play.

 

They can still do that. Teams can try something in a NL group-stage match, if it doesn't work-out its not the end of the world.

From the perspective of top Euro teams (which is who you seem to be referring to mainly), the NL games still have quite low meaning. Definitely lower than a Euro/WC qualifier.

The real winners are those countries outside, say, the top 15 or so. A lot of these teams are playing dead-rubber qualifying matches half the time.

 

How does it affect the coefficient for the ranking with friendlies or NL matches?

 

From Wikipedia - NL group stages are all during MC windows so the two options are compared in bold

I – the importance coefficient:

• 05 – friendlies played outside the International Match Calendar windows
• 10 – friendlies played within the International Match Calendar windows
• 15 – Nations League matches (group stage)
• 25 – Nations League matches (play-offs and finals)
• 25 – Confederations' final competitions qualifiers, FIFA World Cup qualifiers
• 35 – Confederations' final competitions matches (before quarter-finals)
• 40 – Confederations' final competitions matches (quarter-finals and later)
• 50 – FIFA World Cup matches (before quarter-finals)
• 60 – FIFA World Cup matches (quarter-finals and later)

Seems fairly logical given that friendlies have far more substitutions which can limit their effectiveness as an indicator of the quality of the team in competitive situations.

J

 

Um ... groups of 4

J

 

I don't think there will be any pre-WC friendlies or UEFA teams because they will use the one double-match day int'l break in autumn 2022 to complete the final two 2022/23 UNL group games.

 

No pre-WC friendlies in October wouldn't be a surprise (with the September break being reserved for the NL, as you said). That the break that usually takes place early September will be moved to the end of that month might even hint at no international break in October 2022. However teams need to prepare/training camp friendlies in the weeks leading up to the World Cup. FIFA demands players are released well ahead of the WC (two weeks?). I still expect club competitions to break early November (maybe CL/EL games in the first week of November, let's see how badly those competitions will be impacted by the winter WC).

 

He was talking about CONCACAF. CONCACAF has groups of 3 in League A. Assuming the 3/4 teams that qualify from CONCACAF are in League A, they could schedule the games such that those teams are done with their matches in June, with the lower seeds facing off in the remaining games in September.

 

Yup, and I'd argue it's more than a "hint", but rather 100% guarantee that there will be no FIFA break in Oct. There is simply no space for it.