Originally Posted by Jason C:
“Aren't you saying that solely because the expansion favoured both Irelands?
True, it has given them and Iceland and Wales the opportunity of taking part in a major tournament and impressive - but it completely killed the group stage because teams just tried to defend to get the few points they needed to go through.
Plus it gave us all the rigmarole of deciding the best third placed teams and working out who they would play in the second round.”
Thats the problem - the group stages only getting rid of 8 teams. They need to either go back to 16 qualifiers, or increase it to 32, but have the last 16 from the previous finals qualify automatically, with qualifiers for the the other 16 places, which will also cut down on matches for the top countries.