All our thoughts were on EURO 2012 after the draw for the qualifying stages was made in Warsaw last weekend, the competition itself due to have its finals held jointly in Poland and Ukraine. With the break up of Eastern Europe over the last 20 years we now have a massive 53 countries involved overall, both Poland and Ukraine receiving a bye to the final while the rest of us are split into six groups of six and three groups of five. England of course were drawn in one of those groups of five, with games home and away against the other four (Bulgaria, Montenegro, Switzerland and Wales) scheduled to take place between September 2010 and October 2011. While having Wales to play will of course provoke a bit more interest in the qualifying campaign than usual, it now remains to be seen what will happen on the two blank dates while the teams in the groups of six are playing their extra fixtures. Premier League managers on one hand will be pleased to see England playing less qualifying matches than others, but they will soon no doubt be disappointed to see two meaningless friendlies appear on the radar to make up for it from the perspective of the Football Association. They being one organisation that may not be happy about England only having four games, will two friendly games against non-European countries make up for it from a financial angle? Doubtful and dependent on the opposition I guess. One set of people who it has been a good draw for is England fans themselves, just four away games, one of them in Wales, one a short haul to Switzerland - although that will probably prove the most expensive one of the lot. Then off to the most Western bit of Eastern Europe with relatively cheap trips to be made to Bulgaria and then Montenegro - a tiny country sat next to Albania on the Adriatic coastline with a population of only about 700,000 people. That good bit of financial news will be pleasing for England followers, who at the end of January through England Fans, had bought 23,000 of the official allocation of 29,000 tickets available for the World Cup in South Africa this summer. The immense cost of going there being estimated by Virgin Money's authoritative Football Fans' Inflation Index as £6,399 each - if the team goes all the way to the World Cup Final on July 10th. It doesn't give fans much time to save their pennies if England do get that far though, with just two months between World Cup campaign and Euro 2012 qualifiers. One thing they will be pleased about however is that, in the extremely likely event that England make it there, a trip to Poland and Ukraine in the summer of 2012 will be relatively inexpensive. The tournament being one that is pretty much within driving distance as long as England don't get based in the Eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk or Kharkiv. As for EURO 2016, well one of the three bidders is a good distance away (Turkey), one is extremely close (France) and the other is mid-range but expensive when you get there (Italy). Those the trio looking to host the tournament after a joint bid from Norway and Sweden was withdrawn at the end of last year, the governments in both countries apparently refusing to put up the necessary readies to finance the stadium improvements required. And more stadiums will be probably required too as the tournament will expand from 16 to 24 teams for the first time. The future format from 2016 onwards being six groups of four with the top two from each one plus the four best third-placed sides qualifying for the knockout rounds. A format done simply for money as far as I can see to stick more matches in, with the total rising from 31 to a hefty 51 over the course of a whole month. That theory rather proven by the comment from UEFA General Secretary David Taylor, as he told uefa.com. : "National-team football is unbeatable in terms of TV rankings and the interest that it generates - why not increase the number of teams? National associations will benefit, and football will benefit. " Although he doesn't tell us how football will benefit of course, particularly at our level. As for those EURO 2016 bid timelines themselves, well the bids will be handed over in an official ceremony at UEFA headquarters in Nyon on Monday. While the final decision will be made on who hosts the tournament in Geneva on the 28th May. Perhaps by the time that competition comes around the media might be able to talk about England as a football team without droning on and on about John Terry, but I doubt it. |