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

Oh and people: UEFA WC qualifying will not change. So that will still allow the 'minnows' to have their profitable games against the 'big guns'. Also, there will still be room for other friendlies against other confeds.

 

I said the new league will be bad news for other confederations. Don't see how that implies that I'm scared of anyone. Care to elucidate? What am I supposed to be scared of?

 

This is a good idea. From my perspective most friendlies England play are meaningless and barely worth watching. I would expect other countries to see this similarly. This competition will replace those matches with games of real significance. It should up interest in international football and address the increasing dominance of the club game. Attendances and tv audiences will be significantly higher. For the midranking nations there is the prospect of promotion to fight for. The small nations hardly ever play friendlies against the better sides in any case. Having a competition where they can realistically fight for points or promotion must have some attraction.

It ought to increase the quality of teams as they will play more competitive matches. It should be prestigious. Some slots must be retained for inter-confederation friendlies but this shouldn't be a problem. Nations will still want to play against different opposition in the run up to a World Cup.

 

Sorry but no. It was a joking remark. Obviously either a bad one or one you didn't understand.

 

Haha, if you as big market/nation screw your qualification campaign, then the Nations League acts as a parachute. What a joke.

Yes, this proposal is especially good for the UEFA, in particular the big media conglomerates and the larger consumer markets. As that same uefa.com link says: "Germany and Spain will be among the UEFA Nations League contenders"

 

A useful infographic on how EURO 2020 qualification will work:


The main qualifiers are no different to the current system: groups of 5 or 6, home & away, top two progress to the finals. This allows minnows their big money day against a big gun (or guns if they get a strong Pot B team).

I like the Nations League format, it allows strong nations to play each other more regularly, resulting in more competitive matches. It will also help the weaker nations; instead of playing a country of similar standard twice every two years (outside of friendlies), they will now get 8 matches over the same period. That will give them a true indication of where they need to adjust/improve their game in order to move up the rankings and League. Additionally, at least 1 team from the lowest ranked 16 teams will get a place in the Finals... something that I am not overly thrilled about tbh.

RE allowing the big guns to tank: that will only apply to 1 team, who can qualify via the March 2020 League A playoffs; if more than one tank, then at least 1 will definitely miss out.

It will however, cut down in friendlies against non-UEFA teams as previously mentioned. The top 24 will only have 2 dates available in 2018, and zero in 2019 (unless they are drawn in a group of 5. NOTE: The 4 League A group winners will automatically be placed in a group of 5, so that they will play the Final 4 during their bye dates in June). So where teams currenly have 6 dates available for friendlies every 2 teams, they will only have 2 if they are lucky.

Another thing that I found interesting: 2020-2021 UEFA Nations League will play some part in 2022 World Cup qualification according to the UEFA article:

"In addition, for the 2022 World Cup, the same principles will apply to both the UEFA Nations League and the European Qualifiers, but will be adapted to the number of slots available and final tournament dates."

 

For some strange reason I want to play a game of connect four.

 

Nearly half the teams in UEFA qualify for the Euros now. No big team will need a parachute.

Germany and Spain were probably mentioned because they are the current World Champions and European Champions, not because they need help to qualify.

 

I don't get what happens in case there is an overlap between those 20 and 4

EDIT: found my answer

 

So I was thinking of a way to fix the FIFA rankings. Obviously the factor that winning a friendly should never lower your ranking (regardless of the team), it should just give you less and less of a boost. Then maybe adding a strength of victory factor but I digress.

With the Nations League coming into existence, teams like Amplistan or Wales can't forgo all friendlies for a year to increase their FIFA Ranking. So with each European team playing roughly the same number of qualifiers and friendlies Europe's FIFA rankings under the current format will at least be on the same level. Asia and North America qualifying are too forgiving for FIFA rankings to really matter and Africa's is too harsh.

Granted picking the World Cup seeds will still be an issue but probably much less.

Thoughts?



For those who don't know, FIFA rankings are based on a point system. You get more points for a meaningful qualifier vs a friendly by a multiplying factor. The problem is your total points for a year are divided by number of matches played so friendlies won or lost earn so few points that they will almost always bring your year's points down. Wales has won or drawn all of their qualifiers in the last year and did not play any friendlies so they that's why their FIFA ranking is the most points for the last year.

 

Short answer: it addresses one problem, but the problems with the system are too numerous, so no.

Problems with FIFA:
1) Nothing is empirically derived in terms of coefficients. Nothing. They just pick coefficients that they think make sense but they don't run them through a model to see how well they predict outcomes and let the coefficients fall out as they may...even if that means a coefficient is 2.843567 rather than 3. FWIW, the CONCACAF problem isn't that the quals are too forgiving. The US scored as many (or more) pts per match (in a traditional table 3 for win, 1 for draw) as half the UEFA qualifiers and the entire CONMEBOL field last time around. CONMEBOL is the most forgiving, but the teams look good under FIFA. The problem is the circular reinforcement that docks CONCACAF of rankings points. They get docked due to coefficient (even when getting the same outcome in the same tournament vs. the same opponent as a UEFA/CONMEBOL side). This leads to lower ratings, which in turn means the games are worth fewer pts regardless of the confed coefficient adjustment.

2) They don't use prior games to inform the model and let older results naturally age out. Instead they impose the 1 year rule, which can lead to a massive ranking pts drop as results age, even when the team incurring the drop has gotten results over the most recent couple of months. A result doesn't become 20% of 50% less valuable because it ages one day from 365 days old to 366 days old. It becomes less valuable slowly over time.

3) The model isn't iterative. By that I mean its not based upon an algorithm that can reassess opponent quality after the fact and make adjustments. Example, a W vs. the Dutch looks good on paper, but it looks less good if the Dutch continue to do poorly. If we beat the best team in the world, that looks great...until 2 others do so in quick succession. We shouldn't get as much credit for the victory, because the model should identify that the opponent wasn't as good as previously thought. ELO violates this one, but the model is fairly good on pts 1 and 2, so a parsimonious model can overcome this one.

4) A win shouldn't necessarily be a positive outcome, nor should a loss be a negative outcome. If the rankings disparity suggests Team A should beat Team B on average by 1.5 goals, and Team A wins by a single goal, that is a marginally poor result that should reduce Team A's rating. Similarly, if NZ loses to France by a single goal, that should increase their rating. ELO manages to overcome this one as well.

Ideally, I think a reasonable model would be something that incorporates 3 and 4, but doesn't get overly cute with trying to extrapolate friendly adjustments based upon a hypothetical lineup and how suboptimal that lineup is the way SPI goes about doing things. Lineup strength adjustments are a tricky business because players that look good with their clubs (and all of the talent that can be acquired at the club level to play to personnel strengths) doesn't always translate to NT duty, where the team is stuck with a player pool. There is too much roster turnover in NT to get your arms around what an A vs A- vs B- lineup looks like. Even in competitive WC matches where teams are presumably putting their beast XI out there, we see a lot of roster changes game to game to fit style, form, injuries, etc.

 

I like being more informed... thank you!

 

Anyone have any idea how the UEFA Nations League will be treated for the FIFA rankings? Will they be counted as friendlies? Or will they have a higher weighting? Personally, I think it would make most sense to count them as somewhere between a mere friendly (1.0) and a Euro/World Cup qualifier (2.5), so maybe like 2.0 or something.

 

The ranking system already rates friendlies between UEFA teams higher than friendlies between other nations. It actually gives UEFA teams a boost regardless of who they play. There doesn't need to be another distortion in favour of UEFA teams. I wouldn't rate them as anything other than friendlies for the purpose of FIFA ranking.

 

I thought about that afterwards too. It certainly would benefit UEFA teams on the whole to give the UEFA Nations League a higher weighting. Although, nothing is stopping other confederations from implementing a similar concept if they so choose. The merits of the confederation coefficient are a whole different debate.

 

I'm happy to have a confederation coefficient, just not happy with how it works.A European team will always get more points for friendly than a team from a lesser confederation for the same match result.

 

The inaugural Nations League will be cut-throat ... top sides facing each other straightaway in qualifiers for Final 4 ... e.g. GoD of Germany, Spain and Croatia (tough yet mouth-watering Qs) ... with 1 of these teams being relegated and only 1 qualifying for the Final 4 tournament. Germany could drop down to NL B and no longer be a top seed for the subsequent European Qs (overall UEFA Nations League rankings will determine the composition of the draw pots)

This could be at stake:

- Final 4 (inaugural Nations League Championship in June 2019) or promotion to a higher league
- relegation to a lower league (1 in 3 chance of being relegated while facing tough opponents)
- 4 EURO berths after play-offs (maybe WC as well)
- top seed status in European Qs (or ending up in a lower pot ... EURO2020 could already have very uneven Qs)

It seems that UEFA aims to make this a major tournament ... EURO2016 was awful while the 2018/19 Nations League looks very attractive ... every summer will be a summer of football with a chance to win silverware.

We're now heading down the home stretch ... only the results from World Cup 2018 Qs still pending

Nations League A (group winners advance to Final 4 and 3rd placed teams are relegated to 2020/21 NL B)

Top seeds: Germany, Portugal, France* and Belgium
Pot 2: England, Spain, Italy and Switzerland
Pot 3: Austria, Croatia, Poland and Wales

Iceland (18.174) and Holland (18.085) not that far behind Wales (18.328)
*only an indication ... Russia to drop below Bosnia (excluding Russia's points from cycle 3)

Format ... table & standings ... the race is on.

 

There's a table & standings link at the bottom of my previous post ... that table will be updated during the Qs.

 

Wow, I feel dumb. Thanks for the link for the Format but I have more questions than answers. Is there a simulation somewhere? At first glance, it looks like one very weak team (i.e. among the bottom 16 in UEFA) will qualify for Euro 2020 (since even the 4th division/league gets one spot)(?)

 

Yes, that's by design ... UEFA wants to guarantee that (at least) 1 minnow qualifies. We might even see a Luxembourg coming through that route.

 

Yikes! That's going too far in my opinion. Guess its not so bad for the Euros but they have to be careful with WC qualifying. With so few spots available to being with they shouldn't waste 1 or 2 on charity cases.