UEFA Nations League: Two sides of an issue

Starting this week, the European national team friendly series will be held. This familiar series of international friendlies will be tested in a large-scale tournament format, called the UEFA Nations League. The innocuous friendlies will be officially dead.

Combination of many factors

Accordingly, the UEFA Nations League is a tournament that brings together 55 UEFA member teams. The 55 teams will be divided into 4 categories (League A, League B, League C, League D) in order from strong to weak.

UEFA divides the leagues into four groups, and the teams will play a round-robin tournament to determine the group winners and advance to the semi-finals, followed by the final to compete for the championship.

Germany is in League A with France and the Netherlands in Group 1. Photo: Internet

However, what is more important is that the top 4 teams in the lower divisions will be promoted next season 2020/2021, while the bottom 4 teams will be relegated. A friendly tournament with promotion and relegation is something very new, only UEFA could think of it.

More importantly, each League A, League B, League C, League D will have an additional place to attend EURO 2020. Accordingly, the 4 group winners in each league will compete in the semi-finals and final play-offs to get a place to attend EURO 2020, the team that has passed the official qualifying round will be replaced by the team with the next best record.

The genius of this proposal, in addition to the national football honor, is that it is also a “back door” for any team that “missteps”. Thus, Euro 2020 will still compete in the qualifying round as usual. But the Euro 2020 qualifying round will only award 20/24 tickets to the finals. The remaining 4 tickets will be awarded through the Nations League.

In League A, Group 1 includes France, Germany, and the Netherlands; Group 2 includes Belgium, Iceland, and Switzerland; Group 3 includes Italy, Poland, and Portugal; Group 4 includes Croatia, England, and Spain. Even before the ball is kicked, the UEFA Nations League is quite important for any European national team, regardless of strength or weakness.

UEFA created a tournament that increased the appeal by arranging teams of the same level to compete against each other, reducing the boredom caused by teams with too different levels.

Matches like Spain beating Liechtenstein 11-0 will not happen. While for fans, even though they are just friendly matches, there will certainly be exciting matches in League A. Of course, the "television copyright" cake is always an issue that UEFA cannot ignore.

The downside

The downside is that mid-level teams like Scotland, Greece, Serbia, Türkiye… will not have many opportunities to compete with strong opponents to improve their level. Perhaps they will only have to invite South American or other continental teams to improve their players' level.

Not to mention the teams in group D, which had almost no chance of participating in the final round under the old format, now have plenty of opportunities. They only need to be at the top of their group to have a chance to enter the next round to compete with the teams in the group above.

Nations League 2018 group stage draw results. Photo: Internet

Of course, the quality of the teams that win the "runaway tickets" will reduce the excitement of the Euro finals. The fact that France, Germany, Spain... meet each other too often makes their matches less attractive and less anticipated by fans.

One more thing for sure, big European clubs are not interested in this tournament. The tense nature of the Nations League friendly matches can easily cause injuries to players. This can affect the interests of big clubs. But UEFA is like that, always thinking of many tricks on the field.