What changes would you like to see in football?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Ray Parlour > What changes would you like to see in football?

JFairfax: Oct 23, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Benny Harvey posted:

What happened to the FIFA policy of only allowing sovereign states to start playing football? How long is it before we see Aaland Islands vs. Ceuta?

Anyway, wait to you see wht they're doing for Euro 2020. Besides holding the tournament in 13 different countries (which I think is actually a neat idea) there's going to be a parallel qualifying tournament called the UEFA Nations League. The basic qualifying tournament will be roughly the same; 10 groups of 5 or 6 teams with the top 2 qualifying for the finals. That leaves 4 spots for the Nations League one for the best team from each league not yet qualified through the normal qualification. And the leagues will be based on rankings at first with promotion and relegation, not that there's much point in getting promoted since the chances of qualifying are the same in each league- oh except the top league has the prestigious final four.

http://www.uefa.org/about-uefa/executive-committee/news/newsid=2191264.html#nations+league+format

What annoys me most about this is that UEFA got a potentially good idea but rather than running with it just half-assed it and now there'll be extra matches without significantly changing who's likely to be in the final tournament. What they could have done was keep the current format (9 groups of 6) and have the groups based on ranking and with promotion and relegation, ie. maybe 3 leagues of 2 groups of 6 and a bottom league with 3 groups. The higher leagues get more places so that promotion to a higher league actually means something and also the matches are more competitive. So there might be a group with Andorra, San Marino, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Faroes but there would only be one playoff spot whereas a group with say Spain, Germany, Russia, Croatia, Portugal and Italy would have 3 automatic places and 3 play-off spots with the bottom placed team being relegated for the next qualifying tournament.

the League of Nations didn't work so well last time