Expanding the final round to 8 teams would imply expanding the group stage to have groups of 4, instead of 3. It quickly becomes a monster! I think the NL is neat and tidy the way it is. Replaces many pointless friendlies while still fitting nicely into FIFA int'l breaks. Just because the matches at the end weren't the best, no reason to throw out the baby. CL final was dull too.
I'm just going on the basis that they like to expand everything all the time, even to the detriment of quality. You needn't have groups of 4. The group stage would be about avoiding relegation.
I would just have a separate Final 4 playoff tournament between the two best relegations sides and the two worst promotion sides. Sort of like how Germany does their Club relegation.
OFC confirm Nations League proposal https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/sports/football/ofc-confirm-nations-league-proposal/
As happy as I am to see OFC getting more competitive football, seems like it would be a lot less exciting with only 11 members. Maybe they can get one of their associate members to play and do 3 tiers each with one group of 4. With the bottom 4 in OFC being clearly inferior to the rest, I'd have to imagine every cycle will just be Samoa or Cook Islands getting promoted, getting destroyed in the next edition and then whoever is unfortunate enough to get relegated romping the bottom teams to get back up.
As the article points out, the OFC would have to consider bringing in their affiliate members as well (according to Wiki: Kiribati, Niue and Tuvalu). A possible setup, based on your suggestion and the latest FIFA rankings: --- League A New Zealand Solomon Islands New Caledonia League B Tahiti Fiji Vanuatu League C Papua New Guinea Cook Islands American Samoa Samoa League D Tonga Kiribati Niue Tuvalu --- That actually looks interesting - the main question would be the incentives. Since the norm seems to be that these NL tournaments should happen twice in a WC cycle, I'd propose that each League winner gets to qualify for the next OFC Nations Cup., e.g. 2020 and 2022 NLs feeding into the 2024 Nations Cup. That is, each League winner in the first edition qualifies; should any of them double up on league titles in the second edition, that berth would fall to the next team in their league that has yet to qualify.
Now that's not a bad setup. I'd much prefer 4 leagues to 3 under any circumstance. Though I don't know if they'd be able to get someone like Niue to participate. They haven't even been in the Pacific Games since 1983. If they could even snag one of Kiribati or Tuvalu, which I'm sure the could, then they could do 4 leagues of 3 which wouldn't be too bad. AFC and CAF need to get on this. Especially CAF. With all the parity they have, I'm sure they'd have the most fun nations league.
https://www.skysports.com/football/...a-considering-revamp-to-nations-league-format UEFA is considering changing the format. 4 teams in each League A group would mean e.g. Germany stays up and fewer dates left to play friendlies against the top European teams. Then again it helps the NL's bottomline and I guess more teams from the lower leagues will be able to pencil in friendlies. Can't tell if League D will consist of 4 groups of 3 teams (instead of League A). The format could be revamped from top to bottom.
So I wasn't completely clutching at straws But yes, my main concern would be how that would affect the lower leagues. 16 in League A 12 in League B 12 in League C 15 in League D Something like that? And lol at Germany trying to Liga MX its way into staying up.
Ukraine in League "A" next year... I think we will get slaughtered. But it would certainly be a boon to football development in the country to have Netherlands/Portugal level teams come to Lviv/Kyiv/Kharkiv twice within half a year on top of the qualifying schedule.
Wikipedia says the 4 OFC teams that had to play in Round 1 of WCQs for 2018 were "based on FIFA World Ranking and sporting reasons." Wikipedia says the teams were chosen in March 2014 without giving a date. In both the February and March 2014 FIFA Rankings, Papua New Guinea was third-worst in OFC, and they didn't have to play in Round 1. OFC may make it sound like the bottom four are much worse than everyone else, but that isn't true. The four teams that had to play in Round 1 are the bottom four in OFC in the FIFA Rankings now, but most of OFC is bad enough that I wouldn't expect the promoted team to get destroyed.
Maybe the OFC has travel grant money? The same as how Concacaf has to subsidize travel for the smaller Caribbean sides.
Yeah, maybe its subsidized. Not sure. Caribbean has way smaller travel distances though. Vanuatu to Tahiti is further than NY to LA and would be way more expensive. Would have to charter a plane I suspect... or play twice in a 4 day span in Fiji or NZ
It wouldn't be too hard to get Tuvalu to join in on a OFC NL. They are currently playing in the Pacific Games and went to the CONIFA World Cup in London earlier in the year. Niue, Kiribati and Nauru would be nearly impossible to include. Results so far from the current Pacific Games shows that the gaps between top and bottom nations in the OFC are still very large. American Samoa 0 - 9 Fiji Tuvalu 0 - 7 Tahiti Samoa 0 - 6 Papua New Guinea Tonga 0 - 13 New Zealand U23 Tahiti 1 - 2 Fiji Tuvalu 0 - 13 Solomon Islands American Samoa 0 - 5 New Caledonia
Looks like the UNL top division is about to be expanded to 16 teams: https://www.skysports.com/football/...germany-from-relegation-by-expanding-top-tier UEFA ExCo press conference coming up...
If Germany want to get back in the good graces of the European elite, they should be made to sign a treaty and pay indemnification... Wait, wrong century
It's confirmed. 16 teams in the top divisions. Four groups of four. Germany spared relegation. Curious about the exact format.
There you have it - I'm hard-pressed to think of a more resounding endorsement of the Nations League than "We want more of this!"
https://www.uefa.com/uefanationsleague/news/newsid=2079553.html https://www.uefa.com/uefanationsleague/news/newsid=2563561.html
So this probably means only League A, B and C will have playoffs for Euro 2024 spots. Makes sense since there will only be 23 teams qualifying (since Germany would qualify automatically). So 20 + 3. It also seems set-up to have 3 qualifying spots for WC 2022 come through the NL. Although league C now will have weaker teams since league A & B have (in theory) the top 32 teams, not just the top 24.
I did not even know they were going to use the Nations League as part of the qualifiers for the World Cup. Interesting.
Gsus. We're going back to the 4 teams group format, which means in most groups matches are played that donot matter at a given moment. The beauty of the 3 team format was just that no team could take it for granted to progress. Feck it.