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2022/2023 Uefa Nations League


MeadowArab

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18 minutes ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

The uneven amount of teams in Pot D annoys me. Every year some tiny wee jobber team should be invited in as a guest. Get Kiribati, Brunei or Cayman Islands in on rotation. Finally give San Marino a chance at a win.

Division D should just have 1 pool of 7... play 3 home/3 away and top 2 promoted.

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5 hours ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

The uneven amount of teams in Pot D annoys me. Every year some tiny wee jobber team should be invited in as a guest. Get Kiribati, Brunei or Cayman Islands in on rotation. Finally give San Marino a chance at a win.

 

Different topic but for the recent notion of a World Cup every 2 years could these extra tournaments not be for the countries ranked 100+, i.e. The Diddy World Cup.

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5 hours ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

It’s not a bad idea.  I wonder if those countries wouldn’t mind just being in a 7-team league anyway.  There’s a relegation playoff from various levels, so I doubt they would mind too much.  It’s not like (Moldova apart) that their players are distracted from European football for their clubs.

 

5 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

Division D should just have 1 pool of 7... play 3 home/3 away and top 2 promoted.

 

3 hours ago, Donathan said:

I don’t know why they don’t just have a single group with 3 home/3 away. Means they could all play 6 matches like the other groups do. 

 

3 hours ago, lubo_blaha said:

You would need more than 6 matchdays though as a team would be sitting out each time.

That needn't be an issue given flexibility of 'The Week of Football'.

CONCACAF ran 5-team groups across 2 doubleheaders in March + June this year with everybody playing 2 games per break.

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5 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

 

 

 

That needn't be an issue given flexibility of 'The Week of Football'.

CONCACAF ran 5-team groups across 2 doubleheaders in March + June this year with everybody playing 2 games per break.


Exactly. Assuming they go back to doubleheaders rather than tripleheaders in leagues A-C, it’ll take 3 international breaks to finish a LoN group stage.

 

You need 7 matchdays to play out a 7 team group with each team playing 6 times and having a single bye. You could very easily shoehorn a 3rd matchday into the first of those breaks by playing Thursday-Sunday-Wednesday.

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14 hours ago, ropy said:

Different topic but for the recent notion of a World Cup every 2 years could these extra tournaments not be for the countries ranked 100+, i.e. The Diddy World Cup.

The biannual World Cup has support in every confederation apart from UEFA and, to a lesser degree, CONMEBOL. I reckon ye'll see some kind of "intercontinental cup" that will just be the World Cup without European teams, Brazil and Argentina

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Just now, AsimButtHitsASix said:

The biannual World Cup has support in every confederation apart from UEFA and, to a lesser degree, CONMEBOL. I reckon ye'll see some kind of "intercontinental cup" that will just be the World Cup without European teams, Brazil and Argentina

Same thing then

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1 hour ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

The biannual World Cup has support in every confederation apart from UEFA and, to a lesser degree, CONMEBOL. I reckon ye'll see some kind of "intercontinental cup" that will just be the World Cup without European teams, Brazil and Argentina

UEFA should just tell FIFA where to put it.  Only 3 of the additional 16 nations will come from UEFA.  It means 60% of South American teams qualify, as well as six CONCACAF teams (guaranteeing an absolutely Mickey Mouse outfit will get there). Your top ranked North American teams are:

  1. Mexico
  2. USA
  3. Canada
  4. Panama
  5. Cost Rica
  6. Jamaica

The Asian qualifiers are the most insane of all.  Within that group, you have:

  1. Japan
  2. Australia
  3. South Korea
  4. Saudi Arabia
  5. Iran
  6. Qatar
  7. UAE
  8. Iraq

At least two, possibly three nations from AFC are going to qualify despite easily being the equivalent of Pot 5 teams in UEFA.

If you take the top 16 sides from UEFA, you would be missing the following:

  • Norway, Serbia, Ukraine, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine

Sure, some of them aren't currently at the level they often are, but having the likes of UAE and Qatar at a World Cup ahead of Sweden, due to some weird notion of inclusivity, just seems utterly mental to me.

Oh, and New Zealand are guaranteed to qualify forever.

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The 48 team World Cup will be absolutely terrible in the early stages, I’d imagine. I’m not sure what it was about England 6-1 Panama at WC18 that Fifa liked, but clearly they wanted more and now we’ll see three-team groups with an elite nation, a mid-tier and a diddy, with pretty much everything riding on the mid-tier v diddy match. Either the winners of that match, or if it’s a draw then whoever gets humped less by the top seed will go through.

It’s bound to encourage great attacking football, right enough. ‘Must not lose’ games are notorious for it.

The World Cup that we were used to is already finished, with the weird location/timing of Qatar and now a desire to spread the 48 team fiasco over thousands of miles and several countries. To be fair though I’m sure there was people seething at Spain 82 when it went to 24 teams, and again at France 98 when it went to 32. As long as it isn’t biannual, it might not be absolutely awful…

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The answer to not wanting to see the diddies at the World Cup is, as ever, not to watch the opening round.

You'll likely miss some shocks and cracking games, but meh.

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I’d genuinely rather have 64 teams rather than 48. At least then you’d have two advantages over 48:

 

1) It fits nicely into the more traditional 16/32 team format rather than the relatively shit format with two-third of the 3rd place teams qualifying or, even worse, the horrendous 16 groups of 3 format that is being implemented.

 

2) If you go to 64 you’ll have a shit load of diddies rather than a few who stick out like a sore thumb and we can just recalibrate our expectations to acknowledge that the opening group round is basically an extension of qualifying.

 

 

If they’re going to insist on 48, then in my opinion there should be 16 “super qualifying” spots (Say 6 for UEFA, 3 for CONMEBOL, 2 AFC, 2 CAF, 2 CONCACAF and 1 host) who go straight into the group stage, then the remaining 32 qualifiers have to play a preliminary knockout game to make the group stage. 

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27 minutes ago, Donathan said:

Exactly. Assuming they go back to doubleheaders rather than tripleheaders in leagues A-C, it’ll take 3 international breaks to finish a LoN group stage.

You need 7 matchdays to play out a 7 team group with each team playing 6 times and having a single bye. You could very easily shoehorn a 3rd matchday into the first of those breaks by playing Thursday-Sunday-Wednesday.


You wouldn't even need to shoehorn a full matchday - this format would accommodate all 21 games with nobody playing 3 in any break.

September
Wednesday       A v B
Saturday            3 games     (A = odd team)
Tuesday              3 games     (B = odd team)

October
Wednesday       C v D
Saturday            3 games     (C = odd team)
Tuesday              3 games     (D = odd team)

November
Wednesday       E v F
Saturday            3 games     (E = odd team)
Tuesday              3 games     (F = odd team)

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44 minutes ago, Donathan said:

I’d genuinely rather have 64 teams rather than 48. At least then you’d have two advantages over 48:

1) It fits nicely into the more traditional 16/32 team format rather than the relatively shit format with two-third of the 3rd place teams qualifying or, even worse, the horrendous 16 groups of 3 format that is being implemented.

2) If you go to 64 you’ll have a shit load of diddies rather than a few who stick out like a sore thumb and we can just recalibrate our expectations to acknowledge that the opening group round is basically an extension of qualifying.

If they’re going to insist on 48, then in my opinion there should be 16 “super qualifying” spots (Say 6 for UEFA, 3 for CONMEBOL, 2 AFC, 2 CAF, 2 CONCACAF and 1 host) who go straight into the group stage, then the remaining 32 qualifiers have to play a preliminary knockout game to make the group stage. 

Agreed about 64, there would just be too many games to be staged.

There have been folk complaining about the opening round becoming an extension of qualifying since the tournament changed to 24 teams, at least. One of the things I like about the World Cup is the selection of teams from around the globe, rather than just watching the regular potential winners and inevitable also-rans who always make up the final eight.

Not keen on the idea of super qualifying, as it would absolutely end up like the Champions League. In most of the world, the more successful nations get enough of a break in the qualifiers; they don't need even more help to avoid potentially embarrassing themselves, which is something that the big clubs are keen to remove from the game, and is one of the joys of football IMO.

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7 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Agreed about 64, there would just be too many games to be staged.

There have been folk complaining about the opening round becoming an extension of qualifying since the tournament changed to 24 teams, at least. One of the things I like about the World Cup is the selection of teams from around the globe, rather than just watching the regular potential winners and inevitable also-rans who always make up the final eight.

Not keen on the idea of super qualifying, as it would absolutely end up like the Champions League. In most of the world, the more successful nations get enough of a break in the qualifiers; they don't need even more help to avoid potentially embarrassing themselves, which is something that the big clubs are keen to remove from the game, and is one of the joys of football IMO.

I don’t mean giving them a break from the qualifiers, though. I just mean, for example, you could take the group winners from UEFA who get the top 5 points and put them straight into the group stages rather than having to play a preliminary round 

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2 minutes ago, Donathan said:

I don’t mean giving them a break from the qualifiers, though. I just mean, for example, you could take the group winners from UEFA who get the top 5 points and put them straight into the group stages rather than having to play a preliminary round 

Yeah, I know; it would just turn the early stages of the tournament into qualifiers for the games against Brazil, Germany, et al.

The one good thing about FIFA's voting system is that something like that hasn't happened already, although I think it probably will eventually. One day we'll likely see a World Cup where countries like Italy start in the final 16 and don't have to worry about fucking up before the tournament even starts.

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1 hour ago, BFTD said:

Yeah, I know; it would just turn the early stages of the tournament into qualifiers for the games against Brazil, Germany, et al.

The one good thing about FIFA's voting system is that something like that hasn't happened already, although I think it probably will eventually. One day we'll likely see a World Cup where countries like Italy start in the final 16 and don't have to worry about fucking up before the tournament even starts.

Interestingly I live down south and I noticed a lot of snobbery among the fans down here when they played Andorra last week, with many suggesting that that it’s unreasonable to demand that the English players risk injury by playing such a “meaningless” fixture.

 

When I pointed out that Andorra have as much right as anyone else to attempt to qualify for the World Cup, they said whilst this was true, most of the other confederations (apart from tiny CONMEBOL) have preliminary rounds to whittle out some of the diddies with the bigger teams coming in later in the competition.

 

I wonder if UEFA will ever look to go down to just 10 groups of 4 for the Euros and 8 groups of 4 for the WC qualifiers (as they will have 16 spots from 2026)

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1 hour ago, Donathan said:

Interestingly I live down south and I noticed a lot of snobbery among the fans down here when they played Andorra last week, with many suggesting that that it’s unreasonable to demand that the English players risk injury by playing such a “meaningless” fixture.

When I pointed out that Andorra have as much right as anyone else to attempt to qualify for the World Cup, they said whilst this was true, most of the other confederations (apart from tiny CONMEBOL) have preliminary rounds to whittle out some of the diddies with the bigger teams coming in later in the competition.

I wonder if UEFA will ever look to go down to just 10 groups of 4 for the Euros and 8 groups of 4 for the WC qualifiers (as they will have 16 spots from 2026)

I'm a bit surprised they haven't already TBH. I'd have thought that would be something the big European clubs would be keen on, as it would reduce the number of games "their" players would need to be surrendered for.

The future may well end up being a number of automatic qualifiers for tournaments (say, the ones with the most historical success), and a pre-qualifying tournament for the bottom couple of seeding pots, feeding into small groups of three or four to round out the final places. An adapted Nations League, if you will. It'll be a real shame if it ever comes to pass. Permanently denied glorious moments like this:

 

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