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UEFA Nations League


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8 minutes ago, Worktheshaft said:

 

I see the BBC gossip section reporting we will be in the 3rd division of this having fallen down the rankings yet again.

Anyone understand how this competition works? Anyone give a f**k?

It's pretty much the same system as the Ice Hockey World Championships have been using for decades. It works very well in hockey as you don't get Finland pumping Spain 38-0 because they're four divisions apart. Instead Finland are playing your Russias and Swedens while Spain play Bulgaria and Turkey. For a mid-league team you go into each tournament hoping for promotion but knowing that a couple of bad results could have you facing relegation. Much as a club like Clyde know they'll never win the Premiership, they have a hope of one day winning League 2. Similarly, it's very unlikely Scotland aren't going to win the European Championship in the next twenty years, but at least we'll have something to put next to the Kirin Cup if we win Division 3.

Football doesn't have the same quality disparity as hockey though. Aside from the odd Gibraltar or San Marino there aren't many teams who are on to doings most matches. And smaller nations will benefit from playing opposition of similar quality. Another benefit is that it gets rid of these shitey friendlies nobody cares about. I'm sure Nations League matches will be less glamorous than European Championship qualifiers, but it's a step in the right direction.

My main opposition to the scheme is that we don't really need another major tournament.

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I see the BBC gossip section reporting we will be in the 3rd division of this having fallen down the rankings yet again.

Anyone understand how this competition works? Anyone give a f**k?



Everyone should give a f**k as you can qualify through it for the next Euros. Top two go through from the standard qualifying groups, with no plays offs like this time - instead the four places go to the four 'winners' of the Nations Leagues.

The third division seems like good news to me, we'll play weaker opposition but I've no idea to be honest if this impacts on your chances of qualifying.
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Starting in League C is better than League B - we'll surely be one of the best teams in there so it gives us a better safety net if we fail get out of our qualifying group again.

It does have the potential to absolutely f**k us on rankings and therefore seeding for a long time if we start routinely losing to shite like Israel and Latvia, but realistically we should be favourites to win our group in League C where we wouldn't be in League B. The flipside is that you'd expect more teams in B to qualify automatically, meaning teams in B are less likely to have to win their groups to make the qualification playoffs, but we're surely still better off in C.

We better take this seriously.

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One thing I'm struggling to get my head round from the rules.

There's a qualifying playoff for each of the four leagues, with the ostensible idea being the four best placed sides who haven't qualified will go into the playoffs for each league. Realistically, with 20 teams qualifying from the usual qualifying groups, there's no chance of there being 4 teams in League A failing to qualify - really you'd expect all 12 of them to qualify automatically.

Say 10 of the 12 teams in League A qualify automatically. The logical thing to do would be to play it between the two sides who've failed to qualify and skip the semi-final stage, but this suggests they bump up the highest ranked sides from League B who've failed to qualify to give the A playoff four teams, then move up other non-qualifying League B sides into the B playoff, or League C sides if necessary.

All that does is punish the best teams in League B, who have to play against a side from League A, while sides who've finished below them get what should be an easier tie against other sides in League B and potentially League C. That seems extremely unfair, though I guess you can argue that these sides will already have had an actual qualification campaign already so should be grateful for whatever chance they get.

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1 hour ago, ham89 said:

Anyone know when the draw will be?

League C gives us a cracking chance of qualifying through the leagues rather than the main draw.

It won't be until the World Cup qualifiers are completed - positions will be decided based on the UEFA Ranking as of November 2017, so if we have a good World Cup qualifying campaign we could still end up in League B.

 

43 minutes ago, Jamaldo said:

Why would we be favourites to win our league? In case people have forgotten we aren't very good.

 

If we're in League C we'll potentially be playing the likes of Israel and Finland. We can't expect to go out and hammer teams, but the majority of teams in that group will be sides we should expect to beat. We could end up with slightly better teams than that such as Denmark or Serbia in which case we wouldn't be clear favourites, but if we do end up in that League we should be winning our group.

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Guest DAVIDB69
If we're in League C we'll potentially be playing the likes of Israel and Finland. We can't expect to go out and hammer teams, but the majority of teams in that group will be sides we should expect to beat. We could end up with slightly better teams than that such as Denmark or Serbia in which case we wouldn't be clear favourites, but if we do end up in that League we should be winning our group.



Based on what though we don't have very good players we are ranked 50th for a reason
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We'd completely shite it in away games against the likes of Finland and Israel and would probably lose pretty tamely, despite most likely winning at home fairly comfortably (without scoring many) against them.

 

So just the usual then

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From a Euro 2020 perspective, it'll be better to be in Division C, as we'll be playing worse teams. But from a long-term perspective, it would pay to be higher, as you're playing better teams to test yourself, and you're gaining more ranking points as a result.  It's a balancing act.  I can see the competition leveling out the playing field a little.  The best teams will still win, but the ones hanging on to that top tier will lose, and get pushed back down.  Similarly, the artificially low will start pumping the teams around them and move up.  

Any team wanting to treat these like friendlies should be told to get to f**k.  Attitudes like that are part of what led to use being so low to begin with, and that was for games that didn't really matter.  These absolutely do matter.

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I see that the Sun is the source of this story, and I reckon they might be a little confused.  We recently fell to 50th in the FIFA rankings, but it's likely that the Nations League will be seeded based on the UEFA country coefficients.  At the moment, we'd be in the third pot of those, but it's likely that the draw will be made after the World Cup qualifiers, which means that we could still move up into the second pot if we perform well.

It's worth remembering that these leagues are (I think) going to be used for future seeding of European Championship qualifying groups, so it's not as simple as saying that we would always want to be in Division C.  That would likely see us seeded 4th for qualifying, whereas being in Division B would see us seeded 3rd or even 2nd.

 

 

19 hours ago, DAVIDB69 said:

Based on what though we don't have very good players we are ranked 50th for a reason

 

And Finland and Israel are ranked 65th and 76th for a reason.

 

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I see that the Sun is the source of this story, and I reckon they might be a little confused.  We recently fell to 50th in the FIFA rankings, but it's likely that the Nations League will be seeded based on the UEFA country coefficients.  At the moment, we'd be in the third pot of those, but it's likely that the draw will be made after the World Cup qualifiers, which means that we could still move up into the second pot if we perform well.

It's worth remembering that these leagues are (I think) going to be used for future seeding of European Championship qualifying groups, so it's not as simple as saying that we would always want to be in Division C.  That would likely see us seeded 4th for qualifying, whereas being in Division B would see us seeded 3rd or even 2nd.

 

 

And Finland and Israel are ranked 65th and 76th for a reason.

 

 

 

 

Where are Georgia ranked out of interest?

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2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

I see that the Sun is the source of this story, and I reckon they might be a little confused.  We recently fell to 50th in the FIFA rankings, but it's likely that the Nations League will be seeded based on the UEFA country coefficients.  At the moment, we'd be in the third pot of those, but it's likely that the draw will be made after the World Cup qualifiers, which means that we could still move up into the second pot if we perform well.

It's worth remembering that these leagues are (I think) going to be used for future seeding of European Championship qualifying groups, so it's not as simple as saying that we would always want to be in Division C.  That would likely see us seeded 4th for qualifying, whereas being in Division B would see us seeded 3rd or even 2nd.

 

 

And Finland and Israel are ranked 65th and 76th for a reason.

 

 

 

 

Will it not just be that both "competitions" will be drawn based on the UEFA coefficients, rather than one being responsible for the other?  They're a lot harder to shift in than the World Rankings, so imagine we'll probably be around the 3rd pot for the time being, 4th if we have a nightmare qualifying campaign in the next couple of years, maybe 2nd if we have a great one.

Agree that they can't really know now.  Earliest they would draw it I imagine is after the conclusion of the 2018 qualifying campaign.  Any earlier would be pointless as teams could drift based on the competitive games they still have.  It'll be between December 2017 and Summer 2018, and given there's only one international window in that, it doesn't really matter when it gets drawn.  But it certainly won't be any time soon.

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