Euro 2016
 

Only realised today that the next tournament is going to have 24 teams, following the same format as the 86, 90 and 94 World Cups.

I'm not a huge fan of this for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the Euros are generally, as a rule, of a decent standard on the group stage because there aren't as many 'minnow' sides as the WC. Adding 8 sides will dilute that and make for a less entertaining group stage.

Secondly, it is a format where 4 3rd place teams from the group stage go through. Not keen on that.

It does make us more likely to qualify though so its not all bad :ph34r:

Thoughts?

Yea the four 'best' 3rd place teams going through sounds absolute bollocks. Has to be two group stages or all the 3rd place teams play off against each other.

Should have stuck with 16.

Not a fan of this structure at all. Strikes me as being an unnecessary way to elongate the the tournament, whilst lowering the overall quality. But more games = more money I suppose, I guess that's the motivation behind it.

Isn't the Qatar World Cup going to be structured like this as well?

It's a terrible format for 2 reasons:

1. The current format makes the European Championships a tougher tournament to win than the World Cup.

2. It makes the competition too big for the smaller nations to host.

Think that is actually a positive. Even a proud footballing nation like Portugal couldn't handle a 16 team Euro comp without creating economically not viable stadia. There shouldn't be any White Elephants in France 2016. France as a host were criticized for winning that over Turkey but France has hosted a hugely successful WC, two previous European Championships, has great infrastructure and has stadia which is sustainable. Turkey have three football clubs in one city. No-brainer.

Two group stages is arse tho. Best thing about tournaments is the knock-out stage. First tournament I propery remember in the 82 world cup and England managed to get themselves knocked-out without actually losing a game.

The four best third-placed teams going through isn't ideal, but if we have to have 24 teams it's a better option.

My preferred option is an extra knockout round for the 3rd place teams. It's just wrong to give the best 3rd placed teams a route through. It will inevitably be teams who've been drawn in a group with a pathetic 4th team. You will have piss easy groups with 3 teams going through and tough groups with 2 teams going through.

The other problem with a 2nd group stage, if they are groups of 3, is that we have an Argentina vs Peru in 1978 situation: the team playing the final match knows exactly what they need to do to go through and the team that's already out is demotivated / open to corruption (delete as appropriate).

There is no footballing justification for this decision at all. 16 is absolutely fine for the euros - why on earth would we want 8 more moderate european teams? If they want to do something interesting, increase it to 32 and get rid of large swathes of the qualifying matches. 24 is just the worst of all worlds.

EDIT
Turns out that the 2nd stage in 1978 had groups of 4, but the point remains.

OK in principle, but how would you use knock out to choose 4 teams from 6?

1 is just not true though. yeah the group stages may be tougher but when was the last Denmark or Greece won the World Cup? People can be a little snooty about the quality of the World Cup but it remains a competition that relatively few countries have actually been able to win.

Would still stick to 16 though, makes it competitive and entertaining from the outset.

Beat me to it. It strikes me as fairly obvious that the presence of the South American teams as well as the european ones makes the WC tougher to actually win, even if it's easier to get past the group stage.

I'd go 4 groups of 6, drag the tournament out that way :ph34r:

I'm definitely in favour of more football, especially when it gives Ireland a better chance of qualifying. The format works out a little awkwardly but it's probably worth it. No one watches international football for its high quality anyway.

If you're a neutral it's pretty much the only reason you would watch it I'd say. At the last World Cup how many people can honestly say they were thrilled at the prospect of watching Slovenia vs Algeria?

Good job it wasn't a WC, or the Turks would have walked it.