Playoff teams: Slovenia Norway Netherlands Latvia Scotland Spain Turkey Croatia Wales Russia The draw is Monday. BTW, I see that the playoff draw for the U-21 European championship IS using seeding (but not this one, obviously).
Seeding is fair in that example because they are dealing with ten teams that won groups, and six teams that finished second. So the best eight group winners should be seeded, and the worst two winners and the runners-up should be unseeded. This then gives some advantage for winning the group. Aye right, if Holland v Spain comes out of the hat I will eat my coat.
By the way, if there would have been seeding, these would have been the seeded teams: Netherlands 6-13 (15-6) Spain 6-13 (13-4) Turkey 6-13 (9-5) Russia 6-11 (16-10) Croatia 6-10 (7-4) And these would have been unseeded: Scotland 6-10 (7-5) Latvia 6-10 (6-6) Norway 6-8 (6-5) Slovenia 6-8 (9-11) Wales 6-7 (7-10) The results mentioned are the ones obtained versus the nrs.1, 3 and 4 in the groups.
So from that seeding we would have had: Netherlands - Wales Spain - Slovenia Turkey - Norway Russia - Latvia Croatia - Scotland Hmmm, all a bit onesided. For entertainment value I hope the draw tomorrow has the following: Netherlands - Turkey Spain - Russia Croatia - Norway Wales - Scotland Latvia - Slovenia These games would be very competitive and fun to watch. UEFA should put me in charge of the draw
re: Under 21 playoffs seeding. It turns out that what UEFA is doing is finding the six best group winners, who will get drawn against the six runners up. The four "worst" group winners (including Scotland) play each other in two ties.
weird thing is i looked on uefa.com and eurosport.com and nobody is showing the draw live through the internet. they had champs league group stages and major tournement stages draws live over the net but for the euro 2004 final there is none that i found with live coverage. they will pick out 2 balls at a time--those two teams will play and the first ball drawn will play the first game at home. if anyone knows any site with a live draw let me know uefa will probably rig the system
spain slovenia turkey russia holland scotland croatia wales norway latvia I think this is what the draw will come out like tommorow i cant see spain,turkey or holland playing each other but then again uefa might punish turkey by giving them a hard draw but its gonna look something like this
This is the result of the draw: Latvia-Turkey Scotland-Netherlands Croatia-Slovenia Russia-Wales Spain-Norway It was an open draw, but still the 5 best runners-up avoided each other.
LOL an open draw??? rigged as it always is... no different to the champions league.. they dont want the big boys playing each other and knocking each other out in playoffs.. they want the big boys who make more money..
Let's be honest here, this draw is a joke. You're not seriously telling me there wasn't a degree of fixing. Having the top five teams of Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Russia and Croatia all 'mysteriously' avoid playing each other. Oh well, come on Latvia and the Netherlands!
not fixed I forgot how to calculate permeatations and combinations, but just thinking about it I can see that its not that big of a coincidence that the top 5 are playing the bottom 5. Besides, if the draw was fixed, they wouldn't have put Holland v Scotland.
Re: not fixed Err apart from Latvia, Scotland are the weakest team in the playoffs. Wales are a bit more dangerous than them and Norway are a bit more resilient although still not one of the top 5 of the playoff teams - hence the match up with Spain.
Perhaps the balls with the "big" nations were marked with an ultravoilet pen? - It was awful dark in there!
Re: Re: not fixed Right. But if UEFA is going to fix the draw, they would make it so that both Holland and Scotland have a good chance of making Euro2004 (since Scotland’s presence will bring more money than most other nations in the playoff). So a fixed draw would have looked more like: Holland v Slovenia, Scotland v Latvia.
Not really. Scotland is a small television market (5 million, plus maybe some diaspora), and many of those are likely to watch the finals regardless of whether we qualify. The ratings here for the last two tournaments were still very good despite our absence. So if Uefa were to fix things they would not consider us.
Yeah, but you could say the same thing about Holland in that they have a small market. The size of the nation isn't everything. Worldwide people wanna see Scotland more than at least half of those other teams in the playoff. So UEFA wouldn't screw Scotland if it was fixed (which it clearly wasn't).