Euro: UEFA to launch UEFA Nations League in 2018

[Corto]

http://www.uefa.com/community/news/newsid=2079553.html

League A would look something like this:

Germany, Spain, France
Belgium, Italy, Croatia
Portugal, England, Iceland
Russia, Switzerland, Poland

Russia will likely bow out of these soon, their ranking in skewed because they're hosting the WC.

Click to read more...

 

[Shrimper]

Assuming it would be;

1 - 2 - 3 - 4
5 - 6 - 7 - 8
9 - 10 - 11 - 12
13 - 14 - 15 - 16

Or is it random?

 

[Corto]

Assuming it would be;

1 - 2 - 3 - 4
5 - 6 - 7 - 8
9 - 10 - 11 - 12
13 - 14 - 15 - 16

Or is it random?

I suppose there will be seeding done.

Apparently first league draw will be done according to November 2017 rankings.

 

[The Abusement Park]

That could be kind of cool actually.

 

[HajdukSplit]

It is important to note that the Nations League will also serve as Euro qualifying concurrent with the normal qualification cycle. Each league winner will provide a team at Euro, which means the champion of "League D" makes it as well. League D is the bottom 16 ranked teams in Europe so at the moment, the best of this group will make Euro 2020: Estonia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Malta, Andorra, San Marino, Gibraltar, Kosovo

They probably won't, but I wonder if the teams slightly above this cutoff line like Cyprus, Finland, Lithuania, Norway "tank" the remaining WC qualifying

 

[Eye of Ra]

iceland, wtf.

 

[les Habs]

No, finances are not a driver for the new competition.

Right.

 

[Power Man]

What the actual ****

 

[Corto]

I read through all that, a couple of times, and there's potential there...

But there's also massive potential for them to screw something up.

 

[Havre]

It is important to note that the Nations League will also serve as Euro qualifying concurrent with the normal qualification cycle. Each league winner will provide a team at Euro, which means the champion of "League D" makes it as well. League D is the bottom 16 ranked teams in Europe so at the moment, the best of this group will make Euro 2020: Estonia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Malta, Andorra, San Marino, Gibraltar, Kosovo

They probably won't, but I wonder if the teams slightly above this cutoff line like Cyprus, Finland, Lithuania, Norway "tank" the remaining WC qualifying

We are tanking Canucks (Linden/Benning)-style. Not intentionally, but very successfully.

 

[hatterson]

Right.

Yea I saw that and laughed too.

If you don't believe that making more money helped drive this, I have a bridge to sell you


I don't hate the idea though. Basically replacing friendlies with these matches. Probably means more work for the national first teamers, but I like the idea of seeing real matches as opposed to boring friendlies during breaks.

 

[Corto]

Yea I saw that and laughed too.

If you don't believe that making more money helped drive this, I have a bridge to sell you


I don't hate the idea though. Basically replacing friendlies with these matches. Probably means more work for the national first teamers, but I like the idea of seeing real matches as opposed to boring friendlies during breaks.

Yep. Honestly, even the qualifying has gotten stale for most nations.

Top nations playing Andora or even the somewhat better teams like Latvia etc. is not really a crowd pleaser and doesn't get the interest going.

I'd rather see 6 games per season vs Germany, Belgium or England, than 10 games vs weaker opposition.

At the same time, the lower ranked teams will have something to fight for instead of just making up the numbers.

In theory, it could all work great.
In practice... Well, neither UEFA nor FIFA have exactly the best track record when making these changes.

 

[koyvoo]

UEFA has confirmed the comp uefa.com

League A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_UEFA_Nations_League_A

Ending up in the play-offs is complicated:

- https://uefa.app.box.com/v/UNL/file/226762295443
- http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles.../Regulations/02/50/54/37/2505437_DOWNLOAD.pdf

 

[jniklast]

Now that the Confed Cup is likely getting trashed and the third-place playoff with it, I am glad to see that the UEFA Nations League third-place playoff is a worthy successor as the most pointless official game in football.

 

[Corto]

Now that the Confed Cup is likely getting trashed and the third-place playoff with it, I am glad to see that the UEFA Nations League third-place playoff is a worthy successor as the most pointless official game in football.

It might not be, who knows.

A lot of this is still unclear and how it will effect qualifying. I mean, knowing UEFA, they definitely have the capacity to screw this up...

But as a Croatian, I'll definitely take games vs Germany and France instead of meaningless friendlies that our FA sets up with Estonia and Gibraltar (no offense to those nations).

 

[HajdukSplit]

That was my first thought Corto...no more friendlies with Estonia, Gibraltar, Iran, China etc. However if Suker remains after November he will still schedule these HNL "all-star" friendlies outside the FIFA window

I am still confused about how Euro qualifying will go, I know the winners of each league qualify but they still have to go through the regular qualication process too

Also I like that Euro qualifying starts later than usual and not 2 months after World Cup, gives managers more time to settle a squad especially new ones coming in

 

[jniklast]

The way I understood it is that qualification is going on in parallel. At the end, the best team from each league that did not qualify via the regular qualification will get a spot. So for leagues B, C and D there will be a playoff for that spot and for league A usually it will be the best placed team getting the spot (making the third-place indeed potentially important sometimes).

A question would be what happens if all teams qualify via regular qualification? I'd guess the spot moves down a league, but who knows.

 

[YNWA14]

I love this idea tbh. I'm sure there could be better ones but this is a step in the right direction.

Hoping for Portugal and England but I'm fine watching games against any of these teams tbh.

 

[HajdukSplit]

Although the seedings were pretty much known, today UEFA officially published them

League A

League B

League C

League D

The draw takes place January 24, 2018

UEFA also published some draw rules, some new as well
- In League B, Russia/Ukraine cannot draw each other
- In League C, a group cannot have more than two of Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania (they explain due to winter weather )
- In League D, Armenia/Azerbaijan cannot draw each other; Kazakhstan cannot draw Andorra, Gibraltar or Faroe Islands due to travel (again )

 

[HajdukSplit]

Final draw was conducted today

Interesting groups in League A as expected (especially Groups 1 and 4 while Group 3 is pretty evenly matched, only 2 is fairly soft as Belgium probably got the weakest team in each of the pots). A lot of repeat matchups from recent qualifiers in League B, especially Rep of Ireland who played Wales and Denmark most recently. Can't get too excited about the last two leagues unless you're a fan of one of the teams. I guess Serbia-Montenegro will be interesting off the field, from League D, I'm interested to see the progress of Macedonia who seem to be building a decent team

 

[YNWA14]

RIP Netherlands. :'(

 

[Savi]

damn I was really hoping for a matchup against Holland

Why do we always get the most shitty draw possible? Every qualifying round or group stage we get a boring draw.

 

[YNWA14]

I was also hoping for Belgium or Portugal, and then anyone but France. Actually Germany/France is the worst best possible draw. Will be great to play them a bunch of times but it's obviously the most difficult possible group.

 

[cgf]

Group 4 in League C could be fun; Serbia & Montenegro should be good tests for the young Romanians

 

[caslava]

Oh look we are once again with Ukraine. And get drawn so we can play the Czechs for the millionth time in our nations history. Why can’t we get drawn against turkey or Denmark or Sweden? Well at least we didn’t get more teams from the British isles.