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European Nations League


EddardStark

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2 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

I presumed the play offs were winners of group 1 in A-D, winners of group 2 in A-D....

That would make more sense, otherwise you’re going to end up with the likes of Andorra and Scotland at the euros....

Nope, winners of the 4 leagues in Division A v each other, Division B v each other, Division C v each other and Division D v Each other. So you have 1 team from each division qualifying.

Andorra would be tad extreme, as you still have likes of Georgia, Belarus, Latvia (hardly big teams, but still a few levels up from the Canon Fodder teams)

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I've tried to understand this all a few times and every time I think I'm getting it, I end up confused again with yet more questions. 

Here are some of the bits I don't understand:

 

Group of 3 or 4

The Nations League is played over 3 double headers (6 match days).  Does that mean that if we're in a group of 3, we would only play 4 out of 6 of those match days? 

Promotion/Relegation

Assuming we were to get promoted (or relegated for that matter) - does that not have any real impact until the qualifying for the next tournament (2024) begins?  i.e. would  move to League B for the start of the next Nations League campaign.

Final Four Competition / 'UEFA Nations League Finals' 

From what I gather - there is no qualification advantage to this? It is merely a bit of added gloss, trying to create a prestige around winning the top seeds competition. Although, one small advantage may be deemed that these 4 finalists get assigned a 5 team group (rather than 6), and this smaller (5 team) group still has 2 direct qualifying places. 

Play-Offs

Likely to be up against competition within your own league. Meaning that those in league C (Scotland) and D (such as Andorra, etc.) will have a better chance of qualifying. One of the bottom ranked (lowest 16) teams will qualify for the finals.  Lower-tier countries – the bottom 16 in the rankings – are now guaranteed one of the 24 qualifying slots for UEFA EURO.

 

 

My heid hurts!!

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26 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

I presumed the play offs were winners of group 1 in A-D, winners of group 2 in A-D....

That would make more sense, otherwise you’re going to end up with the likes of Andorra and Scotland at the euros....

Aye, but a lot of the the winners of the groups (especially in League A) will have already qualified through the normal route, so their place in the play off goes to the next team down..

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5 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

I've tried to understand this all a few times and every time I think I'm getting it, I end up confused again with yet more questions. 

Here are some of the bits I don't understand:

 

Group of 3 or 4

The Nations League is played over 3 double headers (6 match days).  Does that mean that if we're in a group of 3, we would only play 4 out of 6 of those match days? 

Promotion/Relegation

Assuming we were to get promoted (or relegated for that matter) - does that not have any real impact until the qualifying for the next tournament (2024) begins?  i.e. would  move to League B for the start of the next Nations League campaign.

Final Four Competition / 'UEFA Nations League Finals' 

From what I gather - there is no qualification advantage to this? It is merely a bit of added gloss, trying to create a prestige around winning the top seeds competition. Although, one small advantage may be deemed that these 4 finalists get assigned a 5 team group (rather than 6), and this smaller (5 team) group still has 2 direct qualifying places. 

Play-Offs

Likely to be up against competition within your own league. Meaning that those in league C (Scotland) and D (such as Andorra, etc.) will have a better chance of qualifying. One of the bottom ranked (lowest 16) teams will qualify for the finals.  Lower-tier countries – the bottom 16 in the rankings – are now guaranteed one of the 24 qualifying slots for UEFA EURO.

 

 

My heid hurts!!

1) Basically anyone in a 3 group team would see 1 team with a free date to use as they wish (given almost everyone in UEFA will be involved in the Nations League, this means will have to look outside UEFA or pick 1 of the 3 other free teams)

2) Will only impact the next Euros, as that is if this format goes beyond this Euro campaign.

3) Final 4 has no issue with us as its only with the Division A teams to give a over all "winner".... as you said, side show/gloss over the whole format.

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24 minutes ago, wanderer said:

Nope, winners of the 4 leagues in Division A v each other, Division B v each other, Division C v each other and Division D v Each other. So you have 1 team from each division qualifying.

Andorra would be tad extreme, as you still have likes of Georgia, Belarus, Latvia (hardly big teams, but still a few levels up from the Canon Fodder teams)

I think you are confusing things with the misuse of the terminology. The top 12 teams are in "League A" which is split into 4 "Groups". There are no "Divisions".

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3 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

So hypothetically you’re far better to be one of the best (on paper) teams in pot c, rather than being the worst in Pot B in terms of potential qualification.

Do you mean "League C" and "League B"? It is going to get even more confusing if we don't use the correct words.;)

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We could organise a heap of friendlies against low ranked teams and throw them to drop down the rankings and get into League D. Then win it with ease and qualify for the Euros. 

If you are on the cusp of Leagues C and D it would be highly advantageous to be in D from a qualifying perspective?

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3 minutes ago, iainmac1 said:

We could organise a heap of friendlies against low ranked teams and throw them to drop down the rankings and get into League D. Then win it with ease and qualify for the Euros. 

If you are on the cusp of Leagues C and D it would be highly advantageous to be in D from a qualifying perspective?

I think the rankings for the Leagues are already pretty much decided as it will be the rankings published after these round of games that is used. It's also based on the UEFA co-efficient which is harder to move up an down in than the FIFA rankings.

It would definitely be advantageous to be in League D, but to get into that you'd have to be on a pretty bad run of results that span 3-4 years (for Scotland anyway)

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16 minutes ago, Larky Masher said:

Apart from the usual UEFA being money grabbing c*nts,  what the f*ck is the point of this?

I think this might help Scotland. The aim of this is to replace friendlies with "meaningful" competitive games. It will force Scotlnad to play more games as we don't usually make best use of the friendly dates. 

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I think if we go into this Nations League with the sole objective of getting a play off place, then we will be missing a big opportunity. We should be using these games in place of friendlies in order to try out new players and build a better team for the future. If we also get a play off spot, then just treat that as a bonus. A bonus which hopefully we wont need to use? Our aim should be to build a team that is capable of getting one of the top 2 places in our EURO 2020 qualifying group and hence qualify automatically. Even if we do get a play off spot we would still have to beat two teams, of around the same standard as us, to get through the play offs. That wont be easy. We don't have a great track record in crunch one off games. 

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22 hours ago, Orraloon said:

Aye, the play off bit is the bit that they haven't made very clear yet. The actual Nations League bit is straight forward enough. But I'm not sure how the play offs are going to work out in practise. If the top team in a group has already qualified automatically for Euro 2020 then their place in the play off goes to the next highest ranked team. What happens if 11 of the  12 League A teams qualify automatically? Does the 12th (unqualified) team just play off against themselves, or do they play off against the best 3 (unqualified teams from League B ? I'm just not sure how that bit is going to work.

I think I have managed to answer one of my own questions here. Now, I haven't actually seen this written down anywhere so don't take it as gospel. It's just the only logical way that I can see it working.

They will allocate the play off spots from the bottom up.

Start at League D first which currently looks like :

LEAGUE D (teams to be split into four groups of four)
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, FYR Macedonia, Faroe Islands, Armenia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Malta, Andorra, Kosovo, San Marino, Gibraltar

The four group winners will play off against each other (none of these teams will qualify automatically, through the EURO 2020 qualifiers, I would think?). One of the above teams will play at EURO 2020.

Then the next set of play off spots will be allocated to the 4 group winners in League C. If one of those teams has already qualified via the EURO 2020 qualifiers (ie Scotland - stop laughing at the back:lol:), then their play off spot will be allocated to the next best team in League C. I'm not sure how that will be decided yet. Probably similar to the system being used to decide the worst runner up in this WC?

Then the 4 group winners in League B contest the League B play off. Again, some of those teams may have already qualified, so their places go to teams further down the League.

The 4 group winners in League A will probably already have qualified. In fact most of the teams in League A should have already qualified. Let's assume that only one of the League A teams hasn't qualified. They will then play off against the next best 3 teams from League B who haven't already qualified or been allocated a play off spot.

So, it looks like teams in League B (and some in League C) might get two goes at getting a play off spot. Either win your group, or be the next best team in line, when teams in the leagues above you have already qualified.

20 teams qualify through the EURO 2020 qualifying groups, then another 16 get into the play offs. We are going to have to be pretty shit, not to be one of them.

 

Edited by Orraloon
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Here are the pots for division C.

Pot 1: Hungary, Romania, SCOTLAND, Slovenia
Pot 2: Greece, Serbia, Albania, Norway
Pot 3: Montenegro, Israel, Bulgaria, Finland
Pot 4: Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania

Here are the potential venues

 

I'm hoping for Greece, Bulgaria and Estonia.

Also  keen to avoid Norway, Lithuania and a 3 team group.

 

 

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Hopefully SFA use their common sense here and price these games reasonably and also move these games across the country.  Be mad to have all these matches at Hampden as no way we will sell out with these opponents.

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30 minutes ago, wubbs said:

Here are the pots for division C.

Pot 1: Hungary, Romania, SCOTLAND, Slovenia
Pot 2: Greece, Serbia, Albania, Norway
Pot 3: Montenegro, Israel, Bulgaria, Finland
Pot 4: Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania

Here are the potential venues

 

I'm hoping for Greece, Bulgaria and Estonia.

Also  keen to avoid Norway, Lithuania and a 3 team group.

 

 

I would take Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus all easy to get too and warms places as well.

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