World Cup Qualifiers 2022 will be brutal. Germany, Croatia in pot 2 as they will feature liga B in the 2020/2021 edition of the UEFA Nations League. This means they won't finish UNL better than 13th place which wont be enough for being top seeded. aany qualying group with Germany being drawn from pot 2 will be a group of death as only the winner will be guaranteed a spot in the 2022 finals as we learnt from earlier editions. Therefore it is very important for us serbs to move to Lige B for the draw. If we finish in the top 2 places there, we might have pot 2 locked and can avoid the germs and the croats.
Do you have official link about nations league being connected to world cup qualifiers in 2022? So they give advantage to nations that won groups ahead of the likes of austria northern ireland, slovakia, czech republic over a nation that had to deal with england and spain 3 months after reaching a world cup final? Lol uefa is amaizing as always
To me nations league and world cup qualifiers don't match as uefa won't give play-off possibilities for world cup to league C and D squads as they do it for euro with 24 nations. The logic would be to give the teams relegated chance to come back to the league they belong before use it again for the euro 2024 qualifiers.
Neither FIFA nor UEFA have said that they will stop using FIFA's rankings to seed the WCQs. It's FIFA's baby, they've warned UEFA before that the rankings must be used and those rankings are sponsored, so I doubt FIFA will be eager to change the status quo regarding seeding. Probably in March we'll get confirmation. Germany have been overtaken by Holland in the upcoming ranking and they could also drop below Sweden (if Sweden win their game against Russia). Germany would then be ranked 11th within Europe and will have 4 ECQ matches prior to the draw to improve their ranking. In March the WCQs format will probably also be confirmed. If there are only 9 groups it will be a tight race but even if it's 10 groups there's very little margin for error. For the ECQs Germany are very much in danger of dropping down a pot. To overtake Germany, Poland need at least a draw against Portugal (who are already qualified for the Final 4 + already have secured top seed status for the ECQs and WCQs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_UEFA_Nations_League_A#Overall_ranking
Don't know the exact details, but roughly speaking there were only 3 nations interested in bidding and they were all in the same nations league group (Portugal, Italy and Poland). So the host was always going to be the winner of that group.
Yeah, but it was difficult to see the Netherlands beat either France or Germany a year ago under any setting - WC or friendly. Never mind win a group containing both of them. Although they were a bit lucky to win the group, just the fact that they are on a similar footing as France and Germany says a lot IMO.
Thanks for your answer. It will be interesting to see how they decide to do it in future editions. I would imagine as the tournament gets more popular and prestigious the more interest from Federations to host.
I suspect that even in this instance there were more than 3 NTs interested, but there was probably an agreement behind closed doors for only teams in group A3 to make a formal bid since its just cleaner that way (guarantees that one of the bidders will be part of the NL Finals)
To met it says especially that europe proves its depth in quality once again. And that even the best european nations can't allow themselves to face others serious european nations with mixed teams and less hunger. And of course Netherlands with players such as van dijk de ligt de jong are back to business. The euro 2020 will be quite open...there are ten nations that can win it.
strange maths that benifit the winner of C1 as there were only 3 teams inside. with cutting the results vs the 4th team, scotland is nothing but given an extra 6 points, where norway and serbia hat to win those points against slovenia, respectively lithuania. by that, serbia is really at the bad end, as now norway is ranked above them despite finishing with 13 points in total compared to 14 points of serbia. [emoji2957] other sports (like nfl when deciding on playoffs) solve these scenarios much more elegant. they create a quotient from points and matches. that would have ment: 1. Serbia 14 pts from 8 = 77.7 % 2. Scotland 9 pts from 6 = 75.0 % 3. Norway 13 from 8 = 72.2 % much fairer in my eyes.
I agree about the quotient possibility, i also reckon that they should take even more ideas from them. If uefa wants to keep a logic along the nations league they should mix things in a nba or atp style. Meaning finding a way to put the last teams of a league and the first teams of the following league in the same qualifiers groups. Something like 10-11 9-12 8-13 7-14 6-15 5-16 4-17 3-18 2-19 1-20, give such edge to teams that climb from a step down over the teams that faced tougher competition makes no sense to me.
Don't all the winners get promoted where it doesn't matter how many points they had relative to each other? On one hand, the more teams a group has, the harder it is to win. On the other hand, adding a fourth team worse than Scotland wouldn't have stopped Scotland from winning the group. Regardless of whether it's this or World Cup Qualifying, remember that groups with one fewer team aren't missing a good or average team, they're missing a bad team. Where the 3 team group mattered more was that nobody got relegated because the third place team, Albania, was able to avoid being the worst third place team only including games against the top two. One of the groups of 4 relegated two teams. Unless UEFA adds a member, there will always be a league where not all the groups have the same amount of teams unless they make a league have an odd number of groups such as 5 groups of 3. Promotion and relegation wouldn't work well if different leagues had different amounts of groups.
Yeah, using a quotient wouldn't be the answer IMO. Then the advantage just swings to teams in larger groups. The 4th team in the group is still the weakest team, and easier to improve your quotient against (even if they may be decent.)
I agree. I'm not sure Serbia deserve a massive amount of credit for beating Lithuania twice, given that Lithuania lost all six games.
Anyway with or without quotients, Serbian NT got a big future. The euro u19 2013 winners, and world champions u20 2015 will soon be joined by the u21 that dominated their qualifiers group with a luka jovic being one of the most promising strikers in the world right now. This NT underachieved in the last decades but this mix of generations will do damages especially with the new systems.
We had two u21 Euro champions and they did shit in the big Orange team, so donot hold your breath while waiting for success.
You had big generations before and then...i reckon a serbian golden generation got to perform one day...they also had their fair share of good generations that didn't do much at senior level but i feel this time is different as they got talents coming all over the pitch. We will see. I am not talking only about euro success but also an u20 world champion...and i see the likes of luka jovic and milinkovic-savic starting to do well with their clubs as well. I also reckon that the euro with 24 teams and further world cups with 48 teams will make Serbia one of the nations that will take benefit from reaching knock out stages in an easier way and be dangerous in them.
Yeah, I can see Serbia qualifying for the Euros anyway (through the regular qualifying stage). I guess that would be good news for Romania since they would take Serbia's place in the League C playoffs, if I understand the format correctly(?). I don't see Norway, Finland or Scotland qualifying through the regular process so winning their League C groups was huge for them.
Serbia has always done well in youth tournaments but it has not translated to success in the national team. I don’t follow Serb young players all that closely but I have seen Jovic play and he is really good.
True but i believe that it can't last forever to have generations of players that do well at youth level that go to several big clubs and that don't bring a deep run to the main NT. This will change at least once and i would not be surprised that this day arrives in the next few years between 2020 and 2028 If Wales can reach an euro semi final Iceland a 1/4 final i can't believe that Serbia won't have their word in one of the upcoming international tournaments. I think the difference now is that there is more talent forward than few years ago and that once things will click they will have a deep run.