2006-11-27 - European Championship
'Petrograd' wrote as a comment on another topic that Scotland had suggested that the European Championship be enlarged from the current 16 teams to 24 teams, and that Lennart Johansson supports it.
I must say that I'm not that sure on this. It would create a logistical nightmare or at least a bad dream. It would mean returning to the days where we had 24 teams in the World Cup and where we had to choose 4 of the 6 best runners up. This is assuming there would be 6 groups of 4 teams, rather than 8 groups of 3 teams. I don't like such a system because we already have enough problems trying to get equal groups and it would probably mean more inequality in qualifiers for the next round after the preliminary round. What I mean is that if you get a bad team in one group, you virtually guarantee that the third team in that group goes through, and that maybe a decent team that finishes third in a really tough group doesn't go through. In the World Cup they used to decide which third-placed teams from which 3 of the 6 groups would be eligible for a certain match in the second round, rather than taking the best four third-placed teams and randomly placing them in the second round (which would be fairer but more difficult for scheduling).
Of course, all this and we haven't even thought about the qualifying. It would almost mean half of all European nations would qualify for the finals, and that would just generate more unnecessary matches in the qualifying, if say, we had 8 groups where the top three would qualify. If there were 12 groups of 4/5 teams it would probably also create many meaningless encounters. You almost start to get a feeling that it's more logical to first change the whole qualifying system where you have 2 or more tiers, weeding out nations that just aren't good enough. You'd also solve the problem where managers are claiming that there's too many international matches (something I of course disagree with, because if anything I'd like to see more of them!). Personally I'd like to see 3 tiers where each tier has it's own qualifying, ideally in a tournament format to generate more interest, to determine who qualifies for the next tier. Relegation and promotion can guarantee that everyone gets a chance to play at every level. Obviously we'd have to start somewhere so as a basis we could take the FIFA rankings or the UEFA country coefficients to determine who plays in which tier. Anyway, that's a different story.
Perhaps 20 teams is a viable and better alternative to 24. With 20 you could still have 4 groups of 5 teams each, and that would only lengthen the tournament by 6 days or so because you would need two more match days for each group. The top two could then progress to the quarter finals as they do currently. Getting rid of the quarter finals to shorten such a tournament is for me not an option, because it doesn't give teams a second chance, i.e. how often do you see a team that finishes second in a group go to win a tournament...
Of course, we have another issue, do we increase or change how often tournaments are held? I'd really like to see an increase where one summer we have a European Championship (which can act as a partial qualification for the World Cup) and the World Cup in the next year, with a 'rest' year to follow that. If that's unanimously adopted per continent it would certainly clear a lot of things up and we would see good international football more often. I say 'partial' qualification because I'm all for giving teams a second chance to qualify. For example, in the European Championship we could have all quarter finalists qualify for the World Cup, and then the rest of the teams could play in another qualification round or tournament for the remaining number of places. I'm sure that model would work in other confederations too, and it would make a lot of sense. Depending on the number of qualifying places available at confederational championships, you would need to sometimes play 3rd/4th, 5th/6th and maybe even 7th/8th playoffs to determine who qualifies. That also solves yet another problem in that such matches often have no meaning. In this model they would be meaningful.
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2006-12-06 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by Petrograd |
I suppose 20 teams could work. I generally like the idea of sending less skilled teams to the European Cup so it will actually start to be easier to qualify to European Cup than World cup... it being the other way around really is weird.
Worth remembering that some teams would qualify as hosts though, so you can't just have 8 groups with 3 qualifying teams per group.
I agree that 'best 3rd' is a bad thing :/ |
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