Nations league

It’s fairly simple as far as the competition itself goes.

All the European teams are ranked and then split into groups of 12 to give 4 Levels with the best 12 in the top level and the worst 12 in the bottom level.

These groups of 12 are then split into 4 leagues if 3 much like how some leagues will be split into north and south in domestic football.

The 3 teams then play each other. In the top level the winner of each group goes into a 'championship' playoff. The bottom teams in each group get relegated (except for the bottom level ofc) and are replaced by the top team from the level below.

Where it gets more complicated is that it gives EURO 2020 places. The winners of each group go into a playoff with the other 3 teams at their level. This is separate to the championship playoff so in the top level the 4 winning teams might have to play in playoffs twice (the championship one in 2019 and the Euro qualifying one in 2020). That means a team from every level will get a Euro place so the likes of San Marino might realistically make the Euros.

The confusion starts if a team has already qualified for the Euros they don’t go into the Euro playoff. So it may not be the 4 teams who finished top who go into the playoffs. It may not even be the runner up to the team who already qualified one, we could see all 4 coming from the same league as it goes on fifa ranking. And if there isn’t enough unqualified teams at a level then the highest ranked team from a lower level that isn’t in the playoffs already gets the slot

 

The league itself is simple. It is just that they decided to tack an additional qualification for the Euros onto seemingly to just get some teams that would end near the bottom of the normal Euro qualifying group.

 

Well one of

Azerbaijan
Macedonia
Belarus
Georgia

Armenia
Latvia
Faroe Islands
Luxembourg

Kazakhstan
Moldova
Liechtenstein
Malta

Andorra
Kosovo
San Marino
Gibraltar

Will make it to the Euros as one of those bottom league ones has to get a place.

In many way Scotland would most likely prefer to be in league D because their league have the following

Hungary
Romania
Scotland
Slovenia

Greece
Serbia
Albania
Norway

Montenegro
Israel
Bulgaria
Finland

They may get through Group ok but the other top seeds are all fairly strong and the second seeds with the likes of Norway, Greece and Serbia all have a pedigree.

 

I like the new set up, at least as far as I understand it.

 

It's certainly better than having a tonne of pointless friendlies. It will also help make FIFA rankings better (at least for European teams) as to a certain degree many of the smaller nations have to take a hit on their rankings simply because they are selected as whipping boys for bigger nations in friendlies. They will now be playing more games against teams at their level so their rankings in relation to each other will be much more accurate.

It really is just the Euro qualifying part that makes it all a mess. You would have thought there would have been a cleaner way of doing that