So, this UEFA Nations League business then, I thought pretty much everyone in the industry was complaining about there being too many football matches and it seems we’ve got some more, as well as another competition, to add to the list. Apparently, and please try to believe this however hard it is, but it’s not about generating more money through television rights either with UEFA answering that question with: “No, finances are not a driver for the new competition.”
Right then, here we go, and it looks like something that would test Carol Vorderman so bear with me. So, with 54 teams across the European zone we’ll have Divisions A, B, C and D with Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 in all of those divisions. That will work out as 4 groups of 3 in A and B, while 1 and 2 in C will have 3 teams, and 3 and in 4 in C will have 4 teams, while D will be 4 groups of 4 teams. Good fun this isn’t it, if I have x amount of money and y amount of apples then how many bananas can I buy with z?
Anyway, there will be promotion and relegation of four teams between all the divisions after the initial competition has taken place over six matchdays, which will be three double-headers in September, October and November 2018, while there will also be a final four tournament, held in June 2019, for the teams which finish in top spot in the four groups of Division A. The make-up of the divisions in the first place by the way being based on the UEFA coefficient rankings.
Before that final four competition though, qualifying for EURO 2020 itself begins in March 2019 so there will be changes to the norm for that too. 6 groups of 5 teams and 4 groups of 6 teams will have a normal qualification process though with the group winners and runners-up qualifying for the final EURO 2020 tournament, which will be held in various countries. The changes then come with the play-offs for EURO 2020 qualification, and now things get even more complicated.
The business of play-offs between eight teams in the qualifying groups for the four remaining EURO spots now ends and those countries now come out of the Nations League matches. Each division of the four (A, B, C and D remember) of that gets four play-off qualification positions that go to the four group winners in those divisions. But, if the winners have already qualified, as is probable, through the normal EURO qualification process then the play-off position goes to the next best ranked team in the division, and then even the next division below if we have to go that far.
So, we then have four teams in each division don’t we, albeit pulled out in some kind of ultra-complicated lucky dip format you have to say, and those teams will play two one-off semi-finals and a one-off final to get us down to four play-off winners. Those four countries then joining the 20 who have already qualified normally to make up our 24 teams for EURO 2020, and let’s not even get into the awful new format for that now.
At least the whole thing is still four years away though because to me it just seems like a very long-winded and confusing exercise for little gain. UEFA however say that it will make qualifying more streamlined, does that actually seem the case given how it works?, and that member countries say they want to play in some form of organised tournament rather than ‘meaningless’ friendlies, although most of them are meaningless anyway because of the way teams treat them in the first place and not because they are friendlies.
Finally on the fixture front, all the normal qualifying games and the Nations League matches will stay in the normal match calendar, but there will still apparently be space for further friendlies, as if anyone fancies that I would have thought. But, if we go back to the start and the “finances are not a driver” line, we do see near the end of the massive UEFA blurb that one advantage to the whole thing is described as “stability of income” due to centralised media rights. So, maybe finances are a driver after all.