Platini has done some great work, people just dont like him because he isnt English. For example, the CL final on a weekend - seriously, why did nobody else think of that? How much better is it for fans and as a spectacle?
this has been tried before in a format known as ......qualifying. Daft idea ... nothing wrong with current format other than perhaps allowing you to have a non-punishable by yellow card kick at small Spaniards if they do more than 5 tippy-tappy passes without the ball advancing from where it started at the beginning of the sequence ... .. oh .. plus being allowed a free-run up and kick in the 'fulcrum' of any defender (yes I know that you are likely to suffer most Italy but tough) caught holding an opposition player prior to the delivery of the ball from any set piece ... .. and finally, if you roll around clutching your face after a challenge etc and the replay shows that your face was not actually caught .. it is then only fair that your opponent has the right to a free haymaker at the 'feign zone' ... .. other than that Mr Platini ... leave alone
It's fair to say that if it ever came to fruition, England wouldn't have a stadium picked for any matches.
How is it any different? Every other CL game is in midweek so why is it suddenly an issue to stage the final in midweek?
I know. We are always overlooked for big games. England never gets the Champions League final, when places like Spain get it twice in 3 years. Oh...
You mean other than every other CL game involving a home team, so the vast majority of fans (all but about 3-4000) don't have to travel internationally to watch them, where as the Final is generally played at a neutral venue and involves 50,000+ fans travelling? As for the Euros idea, I don't see the problem. At the moment only 1 or 2 teams have a home advantage so the fans for 15 nations are travelling everywhere anyway. Have the group stages regionalised so that travelling is minimised and there's not much difference there. When you then get to the next round there'd be no difference between that and the current system when two nations share. At a rough guess you'd go with these kind of pools and select 4 of them each time. A: A UK nation/Ireland, Holland, Belgium B: Spain, France, Portugal C: Italy, Austria, Germany D: Greece, Turkey, somewhere else down there E: Denmark, Norway, Sweden F: Poland, Russia, Ukraine For the next rounds of games you could either pair up the groups of neighbouring regions. So depending on selection A would be paired with B. The group winners would stay within the same region, and the runners up would swap between the two. Alternatively the runners up could be rotated one region cloockwise on the map. There's plenty of ways you could arrange them that wouldn't make the travelling much different to now.
