Impossible to understand the full mechanics, though I'm led to believe that it simply replaces friendlies with a quasi-competitive game against a team of roughly equivalent standing which can only be a good thing.
Reminds me of the current edition of Viz which has a fantastic double competition feature where they spend a whole page explaining the ridiculously over complex rules.
How have I never seen that before!I think it needs this:
Not that hard, people!
This is running alongside the qualifiers for Euro 2020?
CheersSo is this instead of Euro 2020 qualifying?
No, that would be too simple. Euro 2020 qualifying is set back until March 2019 and will end in November 2019. But the Nations League will a) decide the seedings for the Euro 2020 qualifiers and b) provide another route to the tournament, with four non-qualifiers being given another chance according to their Nations League rankings. We will come back to this later, but the important information is that these games are instead of friendlies rather than instead of qualifying.
Right, so that all sounds fair enough, if a little pointless. What was that stuff about Euro 2020 qualifying?
Only 20 of the participating 24 teams (yes, 24, yes it is ridiculous) in Euro 2020 will be decided by the usual qualifying process, with the top two teams in each of ten groups qualifying for the tournament, which is being held across Europe.
So the final four places at Euro 2020 will come from each of the four leagues, with play-offs (of course) to decide those four teams. Remember the groups? Well, the winners of each group (if they have not already qualified for Euro 2020) will play one-off semi-finals against each other (at the home of highest-ranked team) before a play-off final to be held at a pre-determined venue in March 2020.
If the winners of the groups have already qualified for Euro 2020 (as is likely in League A), they will keep going down the groups until they find enough teams for the play-offs. And if they cannot find enough teams for the play-offs from a certain league (as is likely in League A), then they will go and grab some teams from a lower league to make up the numbers.
This means that the usual Euro 2020 qualifying competition will actually only irretrievably knock out 19 countries; 20 will qualify as group winners or runners-up and another 16 will go through to those UEFA Nations League play-offs.
It does sound like it might be designed to ensure that no big country ever misses out on a European Championship place again…
It does, doesn’t it? Though we expect the Netherlands to manage somehow.
But wait a minute, does it also mean that a League D side is guaranteed a place at Euro 2020?
It does indeed. Which means one of Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Belarus etc will get a place. Which is making us think that it might be worth Scotland getting relegated to give themselves a chance of making it to Euro 2024, by which time they might have got a bit taller.
Will this do away with us playing the usual whipping boys in a Friendly? We need to be playing more competitive friendlies anyway IMO so this can only be a good thing