In four years time in France, the competition format is going to be extended from 16 teams to 24. To put that into context, it would have meant (from the 2012 qualifiers) the inclusion of; Hungary Turkey Estonia Bosnia & Herzegovina Montenegro Plus, (from the playoffs) any four from; Switzerland Belgium Armenia Serbia Romania Norway Israel Scotland On the plus side, it will give opportunity to teams from countries who may otherwise never have a chance of seeing their teams compete on such a stage, but on the negative side, it does perhaps 'cheapen' what is at present the most competitive international competition in world football. Personally, I'm for it, simply on account that I love watching football, ergo, the more the merrier, but what does everyone else think? Good or bad idea?
Great idea. Tournament football is all about the underdog springing a surprise result and the best teams contesting the knockout phases and delivering some memorable matches. Extending the number of participants should see both of those things happening.
Happy days. At the moment there are good teams that miss out. Also there is a problem that there's only three days between games at the moment so not much chance for rest. Of course the counter argument is that it dilutes the good teams and that UEFA are all a bunch of money grabbing swines anyway. But hey, more football.
Personally I'd take it to 32 and make it the same as the World Cup. I remember when they increased the World Cup to 24 teams and they had 6 groups of 4 teams. The top 2 qualified and they then had 4 groups of 3 teams with the winners going into the semi-final. It was rubbish. They quickly extended it to 32 teams for the following tournament. Same number of games played for the finalists either way. Would certainly make it easier for us to qualify.
I think the current format is a good balance, but will be interesting to see what difference it makes. One thing I wonder is how will the tournament be structured with 24 teams? 6 groups of 4? In which case, is there an extra knockout round? How do the maths work, if you know what I mean? If 2 teams progress from each group then there will be 12 teams in the next round, which isn't a power of two... the only way I can think to make it work would be to have the four best third-placed teams progress as well. Or another group stage which would be a bit much! Or will there be 4 groups of 6 with 2 teams progressing from each, keeping the knockout stages the same as they are now?
Well, that seems a bit of a weak compromise. You could end up with several teams qualifying without winning a single match...
Personally I am against it! You are going to have an increase in the number of turgid teams playing in the tournament - re the likes of Slovenia who I can't say contributed massively to the quality of football in 2010! I fear the same is going to happen in 2016. Plus there is likely to be a need for an extra week. Hopefully, UEFA will see the error of their ways and reduce it to 16 again in 2020. Too bad if one or two quality teams miss out as they soon get their act together again, re France in the 1990s!! As the numbers are increasing to 24 perhaps they could exempt the top 8 teams from this tournament from the qualifying round of matches and give them automatic qualificiation to the finals in 2016.
Like the expansion to 24, don't like the new system though 6 groups of 4. Top 2 and four best 3rd place finishes. Would have preferred 4 groups of 6 then top 2/4 through to leave last 8/16. Would possibly cause more games but this new one seems a bit messy
I just like the fact it is in France, my son will be 15 and I can see a little trip across the water for the Fatletissiers
I am eyeing it up as well, particularly because there will be more tickets available. I have two years left of uni and I really want to go to Brazil in 2014 for my last Summer off.
I agree with you. A longer group stage would make it more difficult for the Greeces and Czech Republics to progress at the expense of clearly better teams due to the odd freak result/weird group sorting methods.
Not in favour of expanding..this tournament is great with 16...only the top teams means better football...world cup was a bore
4 groups of 6 would work best,but no doubt it will be 6 goups of 4,which will make a pigs ear of who qualifies out of the group stages. No doubt UEFA will come up with some obscure rules to decide who qualifies and who doesnt. I am all for expanding the competition,it will give some of the smaller and newer nations a chance to play on a big stage,just sort out rounds so they are all straightforward.
Against. Firstly the structure of a 24 team is a bit of a nightmare from a quality of football point of view. It will be 6 groups of 4, top two go through automatically, then the best 4 runners up. We then have a round of 16. This will encourage very boring defensive football in the group stages (see Italia 90), as sides look to get the three 0-0's that will probably send them through. And who really wants to see Estonia and Montenegro slog it out to a 0-0? Also, unless all six groups play their last fixtures simultaneously (which wont happen because of TV companies), then the teams in the last few groups have a distinct advantage, as they will know before hand exactly what they have to do to go through, and with 3 teams out of four going through from some groups there will be a lot of opportunituies for managers to agree before hand that a 0-0 draw is a mutually acceptable result. Yes In know that in this tournament Spain and Croatia knew that a 2-2 draw would send both of them through, and they didn't collude a result, but would the same thing have happened if it was only a 0-0 needed to send both teams through. Also, i'm not sure I agree with the argument that the little nations deserve their chance to show how good they are. Surely they already get that in qualifying, and the likes of Montenegro and Estonia showed that the answer to that question was 'not very' (Estonia got beat 4-0 by Ireland, so imagine what would happen if they came up against Germany or Spain). The whole expansion has nothing to do with anything other than Politics, as Platini learned from Blatter that the way to get into power is to win over the minnows of the football world (and maybe a bit to do with money and a worry that a 'big side' might fail to qualify as England did in '08). Personally i'd like to see the world cup go back to being 16 teams and the Euro's 8 teams, can't help but think that both tournaments are currently packed out with a lot of guff.
