frankenfreak posted:

Agreed.

frankenfreak posted:

Agreed.

frankenfreak posted:

Agreed.

Gigi Galli posted:

They should've waited to do the seedings for the World Cup qualifiers until after this tournament.

dex_sda posted:

Clattenburg will ref the final. Expected

Nostradingus posted:

Ronaldo must now lose the final and retire from international football, just like his lover and rival Messi.

It's like poetry. It rhymes

Shrapnig posted:

FA Cup, Champions League, and now Euro in two months. Not bad.

hopterque posted:

hurry up i need a place to post about how theres a billion moths in the stadium

quote:

Instead, this is a lament for the best of the international tournaments, three-and-a-half weeks of sustained quality and interest destroyed by greed, political expediency and the woolly-minded give-everybody-a-go mentality that breeds mediocrity. Just because Euro 2012 was also a disappointing tournament doesn’t change that: the previous three Euros were all excellent. International football is drowning in the dilution of quality.

Euro 2016, perhaps, will be remembered as the first homeopathic tournament.

quote:

[...]

Uefa will surely pull out all the usual branding and marketing tricks, and there will be banners and fanzones and only one type of low alcohol beer available, just as we found in France. But with games spread from Baku and St Petersburg in the east, to Dublin and Bilbao in the west, it will be much harder to give the tournament that feel of a unified nation partying while it is having a football festival.

But it’s not just the finals tournament of Euro 2020 that will feel completely different. Uefa is also planning significant changes to the way qualifying works, with the introduction of the Uefa Nations League tournament from 2018.

[...]

In each league, the four best-placed teams who haven’t yet qualified for the finals get another shot, via a play-off system. These matches are proposed for March 2020. There are going to be three main effects of this.

Under the new system, countries in Uefa’s top 20 nations such as Holland, Denmark or Bosnia and Herzegovina who missed out on Euro 2016 would almost certainly end up being among the highest-placed teams in League A or League B yet to qualify for the finals. The play-offs involve a one-off semi-final and one-off final match, with the winner progressing to Euro 2020.

One can understand Uefa’s desire to have its strongest teams and biggest TV rights markets represented at the tournament but can’t help feeling that progressive changes to the Euros since Euro 2012 have been about virtually ensuring that big teams simply cannot fail to reach the finals.

As well as ensuring that the big teams won’t miss out, the new system will also ensure that a couple of Uefa’s least competitive nations do make it in. One team from League C and one from League D will also be guaranteed to progress to Euro 2020 via the play-off system.

In the case of League D, under the current rankings, that would mean one of Finland, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Belarus, Latvia, Georgia, Macedonia, Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Malta, Andorra, San Marino or Gibraltar being at the finals.

Yes, there’s always the chance of a fairytale success like Iceland or Wales. But let’s be clear – those two sides did brilliantly, but before the tournament they were ranked 22nd and 25th in Europe by Uefa. The League D teams occupy places 39 to 54.

The Nations League makes a lot of sense for these teams, giving them competitive matches against sides of similar quality, rather than them being endlessly set up as the whipping boys of the qualifying process.

But it does risk unbalancing the Euro 2020 tournament. In a situation where four best-placed third teams qualify from the group stage, there would be a considerable advantage to being drawn in the group that has one of the teams that Uefa usually considers the lowest-seeded teams for qualifying games. It might be great for a nation such as Kazakhstan or San Marino to experience being at a finals. It might be even better to be one of the teams drawn in their group.

The format of the finals will also pose incredible logistical problems for fans. If you are following a team who get all the way to the final, you may end up having to visit four or five countries along the way. Depending on how the group fixtures are arranged, you will probably end up having to visit at least two different countries just to see your country’s three opening matches.

And you will have less time to plan it. For Euro 2016, the play-offs to determine the last qualifiers were in November 2015, meaning the draw could be done before Christmas, giving fans six months to plan their expeditions to France. The final lineup for Euro 2020 won’t be known until three months before the opening game is due to kick off.

beer_war posted:

Who's looking forward to 2020?


https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jul/12/euro-2020-bilbao-baku-more-minnows

rear end cobra posted:

The qualifying system seems convoluted and stupid, but I think having the next one spread out is fine, Europe is small and relatively easy to travel around

rear end cobra posted:

The qualifying system seems convoluted and stupid, but I think having the next one spread out is fine, Europe is small and relatively easy to travel around

rear end cobra posted:

The qualifying system seems convoluted and stupid, but I think having the next one spread out is fine, Europe is small and relatively easy to travel around

Alexeythegreat posted:

It's only easy if you're a citizen of a Civilized country and are following the games that are happening exclusively in the Civilized countries.

Mans posted: