A reality check: Our standing in Europe

[Gordon EF]

31 minutes ago, Virtual Insanity said:

I assume there are enough windows to play these games in? Being cynical is this a reaction to diddies like Scotland ending up in League A? 

We're far from the diddiest to have found their way into League A - Wales, Iceland, Bosnia, etc.

I'd have thought this would actually increase smaller countries chances of getting into League A. Bit shit for us that comes in in our first season but we'd be loving this idea if we were still stuck in B.

[Ewanandmoreagain]

4 hours ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

4th place at the end of the group stage is relegated from Groups A, and B. England and Wales were both relegated from A last year, whilst Armenia were relegated from the group that we were in. 

C is a playoff between the 4 bottom teams, as there are only two groups in D to fall into.

The group tables are effectively used to allocate a ranking from Country #1 to #55 (minus Russia).  Those rankings are used for ECQ, but not for the WC which instead continues to use World Rankings (unless there has been a change I'm not familiar with).

Because of Russia not fulfilling their fixtures, Albania, Iceland and Israel played a 3-team group.  That meant our results versus Armenia were removed for comparative purposes, and were ranked as the 4th best team of the Group B sides (though, we performed better than the other sides who won their groups, but dropped points against their 4th placed teams).

That has no impact on the next UNL draw, but it would determine our playoff position if we were to need it (e.g. who we would play, and whether the first game was home or away).

Whilst we want to stay in Group A for various reasons, if we were to be relegated in 24-25, we would be a top seed for Group B in the 26-27 UNL.

Cheers

[Ro Sham Bo]

3 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

Looks like we're projected to jump up to 30th in the next world rankings, the biggest movers after Armenia and Kazakhstan. That would put us 17th of the UEFA teams. If you just took our results over 1 year, rather than the weighted average over 4 years, I imagine we'd be much higher. I'd pretty confidently say, on current form, we've broken into that 16. I think we'd take Poland, Sweden, and Ukraine at least.

Projected July UEFA rankings:

1. France
2. England
3. Belgium
4. Croatia
5. Netherlands
6. Italy
7. Portugal
8. Spain
9. Switzerland
10. Germany
11. Denmark
12. Sweden
13. Ukraine
14. Serbia
15. Poland
16. Austria
17. Scotland
18. Wales
19. Hungary
20. Czech Republic

 

Pleased to see us finally get back above the Welsh. 

[Gordon EF]

4 minutes ago, Ro Sham Bo said:

Pleased to see us finally get back above the Welsh. 

[Virtual Insanity]

2 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

We're far from the diddiest to have found their way into League A - Wales, Iceland, Bosnia, etc.

I'd have thought this would actually increase smaller countries chances of getting into League A. Bit shit for us that comes in in our first season but we'd be loving this idea if we were still stuck in B.

Fair point and a much more positive way to look at it.

[Andy_K_97]

1 hour ago, Ro Sham Bo said:

Pleased to see us finally get back above the Welsh. 

 

1 hour ago, Gordon EF said:

I don't consider myself to have a chip on the shoulder about many things in life. Wales being consistently better at international football than Scotland, however, was the one big thing that really irked me - especially since we knew that they were a largely ordinary squad with a very good player in Ramsey and a world-class player in Bale. Before we had them in the qualifiers in 2012 and 2013 I couldn't have cared much, but the way they embarrassed us before having their fans really rub our faces in it was sickening to me. I didn't mind seeing them do well up to a point at the major tournaments, although I'd have happily had them beat England at Euro 2020. As soon as Bale retired, we suspected that they'd start to fall down the rankings - but seeing them fall so hard and knowing that we're the best we've been for quite some time is so, so pleasing. I hope that we get a chance to play them soon, because I would love to see a Clarke team absolutely scud them and do what they did to us a decade ago.

[craigkillie]

3 hours ago, Virtual Insanity said:

I assume there are enough windows to play these games in? Being cynical is this a reaction to diddies like Scotland ending up in League A? 

It's because they're reducing the size of qualifying groups going forwards and therefore will subsequently have the March dates available.

[Donathan]

14 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

It's because they're reducing the size of qualifying groups going forwards and therefore will subsequently have the March dates available.

Yep - I believe there will now be 12 groups rather than 10. Some of them will only have four teams in them therefore the entire group will be played as three double headers in September, October and November 2025. The bigger groups will have five teams so will require the March and June windows as well. 

[Gordon EF]

1 minute ago, Donathan said:

Yep - I believe there will now be 12 groups rather than 10. Some of them will only have four teams in them therefore the entire group will be played as three double headers in September, October and November 2025. The bigger groups will have five teams so will require the March and June windows as well. 

Jesus. Luck of the draw is going to become so much more important. There'll be some properly shite groups under this system.

[Donathan]

8 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

Jesus. Luck of the draw is going to become so much more important. There'll be some properly shite groups under this system.

The draw is also going to be horrendously confusing

 

Pot 1 - All league A teams apart from those who finish bottom of the group

 

Pot 2 - League A bottom teams and top 2 from each league B group

 

Pot 3 - Bottom 2 from each league B group and winner of each league C group

 

Pot 4 - Remaining league C teams

 

Pot 5 - All seven league D teams

 

Then you’ve got every pot 1 team, 4 pot 2 teams, 4 pot 3 teams and 4 pot 4 teams busy in the March window.

 

The teams from pots 2-4 that are playing in March can be put into groups of 4 to prevent scheduling issues there, but pot 1 is more complex.

Those who finished 3rd place in league A have a relegation playoff in March, but are free in June, so they can be drawn into a group of 5 but sit out the first two matchdays (much like Spain sat out last week’s doubleheader)

 

That leaves 8 more teams (i.e., the 8 UNL quarter finalists) to fit into three groups of five and five groups of four.

 

At the time of the draw we will not know the QF results (as the draw must be made to allow qualifying to start in March for the five team groups)

 

However, the QF winners MUST go into groups of four (as they’ll be on UNL finals duty in June).

 

Basically there will need to be some kind of conditional draw where the exact placement of teams depends on the outcome of three of the QFs, with the three winners going into four team groups and the three losers going into five team groups.

 

It could absolutely lead to a farcical situation is the four team group in question looks tougher than the five team group. Teams could be incentivised to throw their UNL QF so that they can have an easier route to the WC. 

 

[PSJ.84]

UEFA have a hard on for making things as convoluted as possible. 

[Virtual Insanity]

Big fan of the NL and UEFA deserve credit for that but this sounds fucking ridiculous. 

[Donathan]

It's actually even more of a dog's dinner than I anticipated because the pots are done by world ranking rather than nations league performance.

 

So effectively you're going to have:

 

- 16 teams that we know have a game in March but not in June. In this case, at most one of these teams can be in any 5 team group. 

 

- 8 teams that have a game in March and 4 of them will go to the June UNL finals. The UNL finalists MUST be in 4 team groups. The losers can go into 5 team groups but at most one in each group.

 

Doing a mock situation based on the last UNL and the current rankings. The bold teams are involved in UNL promotion/relegation playoffs. The underlined teams are UNL quarter finalists.

 

Pot 1 - France, Belgium, England, Netherlands, Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden

 

Pot 2 - Poland, Serbia, Wales, Ukraine, Austria, Hungary, Scotland, Russia, Czechia, Turkiye, Norway, Romania

 

Pot 3 - Ireland, Slovakia, Greece, Finland, Bosnia, Slovenia, Northern Ireland, Iceland, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria

 

Pot 4 - Georgia, Israel, Luxembourg, Armenia, Belarus, Kosovo, Estonia, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Latvia

 

Pot 5 - Lithuania, Andorra, Moldova, Malta, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, San Marino

 

 

There will be seven groups of 5 and five groups of 4. Pots one and three are problematic in this scenario. Pot one has ten teams playing in March (seven of which are UNL quarter finalists). Pot three has six teams playing in March.

 

Pots two and four are fine. They have four and three teams playing in March respectively, so each of these teams can be drawn into groups of four so they don't need to play any qualifiers until September.

 

For pot three, there are six teams playing in March but only five groups of 4 to draw them in to. So one of them must be in a group of five. Furthermore, that team can only be paired with England or Sweden from pot one, as these are the only two teams able to play qualifiers in March.

 

Pot 1 is more complicated still. This is how it could work:

 

- England and Sweden go into groups of 5. One of them MUST be paired with one of the bolded teams from pot three. This bolded team sits out the first two matchdays.

 

- France, Switzerland and Germany also go into groups of 5, but will have to sit out two matchdays.

 

- The remaining seven teams (i.e., the UNL quarter finalists that are in pot 1) are left to fill two more groups of five and all five groups of four. 

 

The UNL QF pairings would be as follows:

 

Croatia v Portugal

Spain v Denmark

Italy v Belgium

Netherlands v Hungary (Pot 2)

 

In this case, Netherlands would be put straight into a group of four, leaving the six remaining teams to fill two groups of five and four groups of four.

 

We would then need to put three "either/or" balls into the pot (CRO/POR, ESP/DEN and ITA/BEL). The first ball drawn out would see both teams put into groups of four. (Suppose the "Spain or Denmark" ball is drawn at this point)

 

That leaves four teams to fill two groups of five and two groups of four. We'd then have to assign each remaining QF to a pair of groups (One group of five and one group of four). The winning QF teams then go into the respective groups of four and the losing teams go into the respective groups of five.

 

It's a total dog's dinner IMO. Current format works well.

[Moanin' Cronin]

34 minutes ago, Donathan said:

It's actually even more of a dog's dinner than I anticipated because the pots are done by world ranking rather than nations league performance.

 

So effectively you're going to have:

 

- 16 teams that we know have a game in March but not in June. In this case, at most one of these teams can be in any 5 team group. 

 

- 8 teams that have a game in March and 4 of them will go to the June UNL finals. The UNL finalists MUST be in 4 team groups. The losers can go into 5 team groups but at most one in each group.

 

Doing a mock situation based on the last UNL and the current rankings. The bold teams are involved in UNL promotion/relegation playoffs. The underlined teams are UNL quarter finalists.

 

Pot 1 - France, Belgium, England, Netherlands, Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden

 

Pot 2 - Poland, Serbia, Wales, Ukraine, Austria, Hungary, Scotland, Russia, Czechia, Turkiye, Norway, Romania

 

Pot 3 - Ireland, Slovakia, Greece, Finland, Bosnia, Slovenia, Northern Ireland, Iceland, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria

 

Pot 4 - Georgia, Israel, Luxembourg, Armenia, Belarus, Kosovo, Estonia, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Latvia

 

Pot 5 - Lithuania, Andorra, Moldova, Malta, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, San Marino

 

 

There will be seven groups of 5 and five groups of 4. Pots one and three are problematic in this scenario. Pot one has ten teams playing in March (seven of which are UNL quarter finalists). Pot three has six teams playing in March.

 

Pots two and four are fine. They have four and three teams playing in March respectively, so each of these teams can be drawn into groups of four so they don't need to play any qualifiers until September.

 

For pot three, there are six teams playing in March but only five groups of 4 to draw them in to. So one of them must be in a group of five. Furthermore, that team can only be paired with England or Sweden from pot one, as these are the only two teams able to play qualifiers in March.

 

Pot 1 is more complicated still. This is how it could work:

 

- England and Sweden go into groups of 5. One of them MUST be paired with one of the bolded teams from pot three. This bolded team sits out the first two matchdays.

 

- France, Switzerland and Germany also go into groups of 5, but will have to sit out two matchdays.

 

- The remaining seven teams (i.e., the UNL quarter finalists that are in pot 1) are left to fill two more groups of five and all five groups of four. 

 

The UNL QF pairings would be as follows:

 

Croatia v Portugal

Spain v Denmark

Italy v Belgium

Netherlands v Hungary (Pot 2)

 

In this case, Netherlands would be put straight into a group of four, leaving the six remaining teams to fill two groups of five and four groups of four.

 

We would then need to put three "either/or" balls into the pot (CRO/POR, ESP/DEN and ITA/BEL). The first ball drawn out would see both teams put into groups of four. (Suppose the "Spain or Denmark" ball is drawn at this point)

 

That leaves four teams to fill two groups of five and two groups of four. We'd then have to assign each remaining QF to a pair of groups (One group of five and one group of four). The winning QF teams then go into the respective groups of four and the losing teams go into the respective groups of five.

 

It's a total dog's dinner IMO. Current format works well.

[PSJ.84]

I imagine this will be one of those things that no matter how many times it’s explained to me, I won’t understand it until I see it in action. 

[Donathan]

11 minutes ago, PSJ.84 said:

I imagine this will be one of those things that no matter how many times it’s explained to me, I won’t understand it until I see it in action. 

The format itself is somewhat simple. Fitting it into the calendar is the challenge. 

[velo army]

Aye I'm needing a wee time out in a sensory room after reading that post. 

[ArabFC]

11 hours ago, Donathan said:

Yep - I believe there will now be 12 groups rather than 10. Some of them will only have four teams in them therefore the entire group will be played as three double headers in September, October and November 2025. The bigger groups will have five teams so will require the March and June windows as well. 

That is properly shit - qualifying for a World Cup condensed into a couple of months?

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

8 minutes ago, ArabFC said:

That is properly shit - qualifying for a World Cup condensed into a couple of months?

With 16 UEFA teams to qualify, UEFA look like they're taking the chance to put through 12 automatically, and invent the most convoluted playoff system imaginable.

[Donathan]

25 minutes ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

With 16 UEFA teams to qualify, UEFA look like they're taking the chance to put through 12 automatically, and invent the most convoluted playoff system imaginable.

Don’t think the playoffs will be any different to the 2022 World Cup tbh. 12 group winners will go straight to the WC and the 12 runners up + 4 others* will form four playoff paths with SFs and F to find the last four teams.

 

 

* - I assume the 4 “others” will be the best UNL group winners that haven’t already qualified, but could be the best four 3rd place teams.