I'm wondering if the European system that throws in likes of Lichtenstein and Andorra into the qualifying mix means we don't get "battle hardened" or face enough top-class opposition in properly competitive games leading up to tournaments proper?
Reality is there only are one or maybe two opponents in qualifying groups that can sort of replicate the quality you'd face in finals and the other 3 or 4 teams just provide shooting practice or pose a lot of "bus parking" conundrums.
By contrast, the S.Americans have a brutal big group of death in which even the "weaker" teams provide very stiff opposition and the overall result is that the teams that come through it have a lot of hard/challenging games under their belt and are better prepared for the transition from qualifying to finals with less of an adjustment necessary.
I reckon this could be a small but valid factor that mitigates against Germany and Holland in upcoming semis and more generally against all the top Euro sides. Basically, I'd like to see some sort of pre-qualifying in Europe to eliminate weaker teams before a round of what would be consistently hard games all round to identify qualifiers.

Oh dear, England would never qualify for a World Cup...

Haven't there been more European than non-European World Cup winners? I think Europe and South America are pretty evenly matched in the World Cup. Look at the semi finals this year and the last 2 World Cup finals have been all European.

This is one of the things the UEFA Nations League will help try to solve.

There will be more competitive, stronger, meaningful games.

...and we as England might find out what our true place in European football is from it.

I like the idea of the nations getting more games against teams of more or less equal strength, but I think they could come up with a better format.

The 54 UEFA nations would be drawn into 6 groups of 9 teams (based on their UEFA rankings). Each team would play 4 home and 4 away games against the other teams in their division. The bottom 3 in each division at the end would be relegated and the top 3 promoted. These games would be played over 9 matchdays between September 2018 and June 2019.

The top 6 nations in Division 1 would qualify automatically for Euro 2020, whilst the remaining 48 teams would participate in the second phase of qualifying.

12 groups of 4 teams, playing each other twice between September and November 2019. Group winners qualify for Euro 2020 whilst the runners up play each other in a playoff match with the winners also qualifying.

All it takes is for your ranking to fall low enough and you will then get to face a much harder group.

still think there should be PRE qualifying for europe ..... they have it for the other continental regions ..... OR even have a competition for those who don't qualify in the pre groupings!

i feel having 24 qualifiers is too many for a finals

would like to see the NON-FIFA teams in it too!

16 was the perfect number for the Euros. It's a shame UEFA messed with the format.

It does seem blaringly obvious doesn't it?

UEFA scratches it's head, putting forward a multi-country Euro 2020, because for some reason - countries can't afford to be hosting it that year.

Great time to stick with the expansion UEFA!

As bad as FIFA in their own way.

It could be interesting to open the tournament up to more teams, this world cup has shown that some of the lesser teams are catching up and can player bigger teams to the point that it isn't a one sided affair.

Let's wait and see. The World Cup was only expanded to 32 teams as recently as 1998 and yet everyone agrees it has been a huge success.

A 24 team Euros could surprise us, especially if the games are all competitive and there are quite a few upsets.

My issue is that it's very much a going through the motions.

The top teams in Qualifying will most likely already have assured qualification after 7 games.

Then in the tournament proper - you're only losing 8 teams in the Round of 16.

Just seems farcical. They might as well have gone the whole hog and had 4 team qualifying groups with top two teams going through with a tournament of 32.

The problem is that the group stage could effectively be a non-entity, with 3 of the 4 teams going through in four of the six groups.

Also, the teams playing their final group matches last will have the advantage of knowing what they need to do in order to get one of the spots for best 3rd place finish.

In the 1986 World Cup both Bulgaria and Uruguay qualified in third place with just 2 points from 2 draws.

For sure, but if there were upsets, it would still make for a very entertaining tournament. Even with three going through, the games would still be very competitive and the top seeds would not like to go into the last 16 having failed to win their group (otherwise they could be faced with a Germany vs Netherlands or Spain vs Italy scenario etc).

Also with three going through, it would almost certainly ensure that Match 3 in the first round would not be dead rubber games for anyone (as happened with England and Spain this year) and that qualification spots would still be open for all teams and therefore everything to play for.

I'm pretty sure that under this system, any team on 0 points would still be in contention for a third place spot no matter what way the previous results had panned out, which could make for an exciting set of Match 3 games (and these matches will have identical kick off times in each group)

It stinks a bit for me that you could lose your first two matches and still go through by winning the third.

This will basically reduce a good 16 team tournament to a cup competition. Expanding the World Cup is fine but if we are going to have more European teams a 20 team event might have been the way to go with four groups of five.

I agree with a 20 team event but you can't have 4 groups of 5 as the odd number means one team will have finished their group campaign before the other 4 meaning we could have an Algeria 1982 situation all over again.

Maybe 5 groups of 4 with the group winners and 3 best placed runners up progressing to the Quarter-Finals?

I suspect one of the main reasons they've expanded it is to give middle ranking and lesser nations a chance to finally appear on the European stage. Teams like Iceland, Cyprus, Finland, Estonia, Belarus, Armenia and Montenegro have never qualified for anything and it would be a huge shot in the arm for them to do so.

There seems to be a lot of opposition to the expansion here, but I'm in favour of it. There has been a great levelling off of standards in Europe in in the last 10 or 12 years or so and the gap between best and worst is much smaller. We could have a surprisingly competitive and entertaining tournament.

I don't think 16 was the perfect number at all. There are around 30 quality teams in Europe and by the time the hosts have qualified automatically and you've got your 'big' 6 or 10 teams who always qualify that leaves lots of good teams missing out. Far better to have a lot of your good teams at the finals than not have them there. Although 16 works better structurally, it's not enough teams given the amount of quality teams there are in Europe.

Definitely : the top 24 European teams in the FIFA rankings are all inside the World top 50.

The idea that the tournament would be heavily diluted by allowing 24 teams in is almost certainly a fallacy. Look at the quality of some of the teams who didn't even qualify for Brazil : Denmark, Sweden, Ukraine, Serbia, Slovenia etc

Its obviously not perfect, but we already have a situation anyway where Germany and USA could have manufactured a draw in their group and both gone through, Euro 2004 Denmark and Sweden knew a draw saw them through, etc, so it isn't the big deal it might seem.

In a five team group the likelihood is in a final match both teams involved would need to be 3 of 3 anyway to be sure of a draw being enough, so complaints are less likely.


My main gripe is that they have over expanded it. What you suggest is no less likely to improve accessibility and competitiveness if we kept to 20 sides.

Regarding "Quality" of the Euros, remember it has been won by the so-called "weaker" nations of Greece and Denmark, who could well find it difficult to reach the last 16, so having 24 doesn't necessarily weaken the tournament.

Personally I'd rater have 20 teams in 4 groups of five, guaranteeing each team 4 games, and the top two = quarter finals.

The larger number of games also means smaller countries could possibly host some of the games, for example if England were hosts again, there would be enough games to have at least one in Scotland, one in Wales and NI. Wouldn't expect Sco/Wal.NI to be allowed automatic entry though.

Of course they would, like they did for this WC and the last. All the groups are of a similar ranking so it isn't like England have the easiest group. Qualifying isn't the problem, its what to do when qualified that they struggle with.

And yet they failed to qualify in '74, '78 and '94 and in '66 and '70 they automatically qualified, so who knows what would have happened