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

Whilst that is normally true, most of us here seem to agree that Africa has the worst WC qualification system for ensuring the best teams make the world cup

 

Also could delay the Asian Cup by a year to be played in the same year as the EURO and Copa America.

 

I think they have among the best because over 10 games you'd expect quality to emerge, especially because it's played over more than two years because they had to fit an entire Afcon qualifying round in between WCQ games.

 

I am not convinced the long time duration helps that argument. It's certainly an improvement over the previous CAF format which essentially was decided in 2 games.
But the main problem in their current format is eliminating some 2nd place teams while having other stay alive. It's one thing to do that with 3rd or 4th-place teams, as they would only have themselves to blame. But you finish 2nd behind Morocco and could be out?

 

To decouple the qualifying processes I think that would be essential.

 

I think the biggest problem with CAF qualifying is that only one team makes it per group which means the draw is super important and it can be hard to make up for a bad day. Also only some second placed teams get a second chance through playoffs which again makes the draw super important. AFC could adopt a similar system to reduce WC qualification (8 groups of 6 or 5) but could also give all second placed teams a chance through the playoffs by sending all 8 through a knockout process that would occupy 2 windows.

 

AFC would benefit significantly from truncating its qualifiers and splitting them so every year the national teams have a fresh objective between NL and qualification for the next tournament, instead of having so many teams without meaningful games for so long (the teams eliminated in R2 haven't played competitively since June).

Apparently there is an AFC Executive Committee meeting next month so we might hear more after that.

It is also probably linked to AFC consulting the market ahead of its next round of national team commercial rights sales.

AFC warming up market for global rights sale beyond 2028 | SportBusiness Media

 

I've always liked the AFC qualifiers because they do a great job to ensure that the best and most deserving teams get to the World Cup, which should be the main objective of any WC qualifying process.

In UEFA, too much is left to chance, and to some extent CAF is like that too, though not as much as when only 5 CAF teams qualified.

Yes, it is true that some AFC teams have no competitive matches for a while, but that could be easily fixed w/o messing with the good WC qualifying format (For e.g., those eliminated before the current WCQ round could begin their 2027 AFC Cup qualifiers early-2025).

 

Thats when they do start. I think that round could be improved by eliminating the playoff round and allow all teams to participate in groups of 4 or 5. There is time to do that as they still play this round over 6 windows.

 

That doesn't solve the problem of the majority of teams qualifying for the Asian Cup doing so three years before the event.

6-10 games is sufficient to qualify for the Asian Cup and World Cup, you don't need endless rounds to effectively rig the competition in favour of the highest-ranked teams.

Ultimately, the pitch determines which teams deserve to qualify and that has to be done in a way that maximises fan engagement. Having jeopardy-adverse formats which limits opportunities for teams to grow is unfair, doesn't do much for Asian football financials either because fans many fans prefer to follow more interesting competitions.

 

Can't blame everything on the # of teams that qualify for WCs and how many competitive matches weak NTs play. At some point, we have to admit that some countries will simply always suck, due to their small population (hello everyone in OFC except NZ and PNG) and/or they don't have the genes and/or culture.

It used to be that CONCACAF nations that didn't qualify for the "HEX" would go a very long time where they'd play zero or very few competitive matches. Like years! They fixed that, and guess what? Yeah, Anguilla still sucks!

 

Yes, I understand that, but I'm referring to countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines which probably all have football among their two most popular sports and certainly would have deep reservoirs of unexploited talent (Asia is home to 60% of global youth).

 

There is scope to do something to add more competitive games for these nations without cutting back WC qualifiers and introducing a full blown nations league every two years (in which they will only be playing each other anyway). Not everyone needs to follow the UEFA model.

 

But my point is to give every team a pathway to improve and to have a fresh objective every year so they don't waste years like happens now. This also helps increase fan engagement to help generate much needed revenue and create a virtuous circle.

You don't need a minimum of 16 games to qualify teams for the WC.

About the point that weaker teams only play each other in NL, well it's not true because there's the promotion and relegation mechanisms (automatically and via playoffs).

NL in Asia can use four windows every even year, leaving up to five windows for de-coupled qualifiers every odd year.

 

I think I would prefer to keep a similar system to now rather than adopt a system that makes it not much more than a knockout tournament. To get 8 teams from 5 windows you would need 8 groups of 5 and six. This format would work fine for the Asian Cup with 3 teams qualifying from each group but with 1 qualifying from each group spreads the talent is reasonably thin and it would be rare for more than 2 teams to have a realistic chance of qualifying from a group, and often a group will have a standout favourite.

I'm also not convinced of the need for a NL every second year. One each 4 year cycle is more than sufficient.

A NL in Asia will likely consist of 3 divisions. I would much rather see a system where we find a winner in each division rather than the new UEFA system of extra playoff matches. 4 up and 4 down each cycle from each division is sufficient. The whole idea of a NL is for teams of similar ability to be playing each other competitively with Pro/Rel to allow teams to improve their standing over time as they improve or decline.

 

In the latest Nations League Anguilla won its first competitive match since 2011, so even they have benefited from having competition that's more extensive than losing the first knockout preliminary round in every WCQ and Caribbean Cup.

 

We were talking about whether weak footballing nations were getting better. Can't believe it took them 5 years of NL matches to win 1. That's pretty bad.

Anyway, I have nothing against the idea of a NL. Just don't like how they keep being expanded at the expense of WC qualifiers.

 

It's also a commercial decision to do that by increasing fan engagement which is a consequence of:

- NL knockout ties between evenly-matched opponents, including heavyweight ties in League A;
- smaller qualifying groups reducing the number of qualifiers to between 6 and 8 games which reduces predictability and increases jeopardy to an optimal level. For example, you can expect that most of the 12 UEFA qualifying groups will feature tight finishes next November.

 

If the second placed teams weren't going to playoffs I think you will see very few tight finishes. I would be surprised if we didn't know at least half of the qualified teams going in to the last two matches (unless UEFA rig the draw so the two highest seeds play each other in that window).

 

❌NO PLANS FOR AFC NATIONAL LEAGUE IN 2025

Earlier reports suggested that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) was considering introducing an Asian Nations League, modeled after UEFA’s Nations League in Europe. The idea aimed to elevate international football competition… pic.twitter.com/bUkzHxHjeP

— ASEAN FOOTBALL (@theaseanball) November 30, 2024

I feel comfortable with this. I don't think Asia needs to follow the UEFA model. Asia has 5 sub regions which hold their own tournaments that provide extra competitive matches. Dates need to be left for the stronger teams to play against teams from other confederations.

 

The bolded part is not necessarily true. As mentioned before, more groups mean a bigger disparity in quality between the teams in each group (actually goes against your first point, so if that is really important to you, you should want only a few groups).

So, let's see how it plays out.

 

UEFA explilicity stated that the expanded UNL will facilitate smaller qualifying groups which will render them less predictable.

Fewer games reduces predictability, notwithstanding the increased number of teams in each draw pot, that's why the other confederations have larger qualifying groups.

 

That doesn't make it true.

All we know right now is that the expanded UNL made those matches less meaningful on average (i.e. more games played to determine which teams get promoted/relegated, etc.)

 

They became more meaningful because every position in every group in Leagues A-C had a different consequence.

On average, the more contests played in a competition the higher the predictability, that seems evident.