Expounding on this: Out of the 55 UEFA nations, ENG qualified as hosts and 47 nations competed for 15 spots - meaning 32 nations will have failed to qualify for the EURO. That's *perfect* to set up a knockout competition of 4 eight-team brackets. Those 4 winning non-EURO teams could then go into playoffs against the 4 third-place teams from the EURO groups. That's 4 WWC spots plus the 8 that would automatically go in. (Then if there's a 13th final WWC spot to determine, the 4 losers from those play-offs do one final repechage for it.)
UEFA are not creative enough to do that. I bet on single games instead of the usual home and away group game format. That would reduce the number of games by half basically. So instead of 10 games for a six teams group, just 5 games.
Uggh: Hate the decision to push back the Euros by a year. Are we to believe they couldn't have figured out a way to have both next summer? It feels like everyone is in a big rush to cancel tournaments.
Actually the move to 2022 isn't official yet; sorry, there's conflicting info on the women's tournament: Although several FAs are saying they have been told women's Euro 2021 (in England) will be moved to 2022 UEFA say a final decision on this will be made in the summer. Could be possible to delay the start I guess— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) March 17, 2020 Final decision on Euro 2021 women's will be in the summer— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) March 17, 2020 And more on the reasons why the move for the men's: OFFICIAL: Euro 2020 postponed pic.twitter.com/FWdUuEnIuS— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) March 17, 2020 These are not easy decisions to make, and I don't think anyone's taking them lightly or "in a rush" to do so.
I guess UEFA will start the qualification for the World Cup before the EURO. There is no reason why they should wait until the EURO is over. In 2003 and 2007 Germany played some EURO qualifiers for EURO 2005 and 2009 before the World Cup. Now they should play World Cup qualifiers before EURO.
I'm going to quote myself in post #29 to draw attention to it because it seems like people aren't seeing/reading it (see above post in full for another journalist reporting on it). Sorry about the confusion; there was conflicting info as journalists rushed to get out the news. There's been NO FINAL DECISION about the women's Euro, but its a distinct possibility (if not probability) that it'll be moved so as not to conflict with the men's tournament. The final decision will be made this summer.
One of the arguments I hear that makes in somewhere between hard and impossible to move the Olympics is that in any move that has been suggested would conflict with many other events in many sports. It seems that there are other events that have equal difficulty in moving. I believe that many events will get canceled rather than moved.
The Olympics have now been postponed to next summer. Now the women's EURO will almost surely move to 2022, since competing with both the Olympics and the men's EURO in the same summer would be far too hectic.
And what happens with the Champions League? Also pushed back a year? They wouldn't dare cancel it, would they, and just say to all the competing clubs: tough luck! They all deserve their shot.
It is shocking to me that China did not come to grips with its wild animal/wet market problem after first throwing Asia into turmoil 17 years ago with SARS, which started in a Chinese market. I was in China at that time and walked through a couple of their markets and they were eye-opening, to say the least-- live scorpions in baskets, shark fins, snakes, bats....You could barely look at some of it. They clearly didn't do enough to address the problem, and now here were are--the whole freakin' world in turmoil.
Centuries of culture are hard to change. Also, the world snapped down on SARS quickly. There were less than 9000 cases total, and things had leveled off there about two months after the 1000th case. This COVID-19 is an entire other beast - sp I think it's much more likely that there are cultural changes in this aftermath than it was after SARS. Considering it's an annual competition, highly unlikely for it to be pushed back a year. Think of it as just another league, not as your bigger-scale multinational competition. It'll either be cancelled or simply shortened, e.g. each stage of the competition becomes a one-off game at the higher seed instead of the normal two-leg ties.
I'm someone who doesn't fully buy into fatigue due to the fixture schedule in the women's game, but that would also really be too much for the Dutch, Swedish, and English players. (Maybe too much for Little and/or Fishlock as well if Scotland and/or Wales qualify for the Euros.)
Oh, I wasn't trying to suggest a fatigue argument. The men's EURO certainly wouldn't affect fatigue on the women's end. All I was trying to say was that would be a lot to cram into one summer, from multiple points of view. And yeah, if you're a team in both the EURO and the Olympics, the scheduling between the two events could potentially be problematic simply form a logistics argument.
I would blame greedy/inept Chinese politicians, before Chinese livestock markets. Regional Chinese officials spent time silencing medical+lab professionals who warned about outbreak sources. Success for the New Lunar Year celebrations was more important on politicians' minds than people's welfare. https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-...-up-ee65211a-afb6-4641-97b8-353718a5faab.html After that, you must blame certain European gov'ts for acting slowly, while telling China to act quickly. Arrogance/ignorance about an Asian outbreak that could not possibly become a world epidemic. Something similar happened during the 2009-2010 swine flu epidemic. Nobody blamed contaminated pork suppliers in both Mexico and United States, where outbreaks occurred. Both gov'ts took fast action, while the rest of the world made swine flu jokes. Even Mexican teams were mistreated while participating as guests in 2009+2010 South American tournaments. Silly jokes against Mexican guests which escalated into animosity on the field. Mexican clubs no longer participate in Copa Libertadores since 2016, coincidentally. I would bet that in 2020, the rest of the world would be joking about "<exotic animal> flu" if China had stopped the outbreak within its borders. I would ask why several national gov'ts did not act as quickly as South Korea and Japan did.
Oh, sorry. I wasn’t saying you were. I’ve just made multiple comments here about how female players should arguably be mostly capable of handling their game load without too much issue. So, I’m just pointing out that a Euros shortly followed by an Olympics is a fixture list that’s bound to result in serious fatigue for most, if not all, outfield players.
Men Euro 11 June to 11 July 21 Olympics 23 July to 8 August 21 Take your pic for the new Women Euros date...
Shocking News! UEFA today has decided that the women`s EURO instead of being postponed will be cancelled. They said that they couldn`t find any date which doesn`t clash with more important events. The good news:UEFA has decided that the new European Champion will be decided by fan votes. On Facebook you can vote until midnight for your favourite team. The team with the most votes will be the new European Champion.
Well, I was just going to say to myself: with the general depressed mood we're in these days, it quite makes sense that no April Fool happened so far. I had to wait until 14:45 to get one.
You should vote instead of unsettle other posters! Currently Italy is in second place with only four votes less than San Marino!