UEFA explore possibility of Nations League

Uefa is considering a radical overhaul of international football that would see national teams playing a new Nations League competition.

The idea, floated at executive committee meetings that preceded aUefa meeting in Dubrovnik last month, would see Uefa using existing dates for friendlies in the international calendar to launch a new league involving all 54 member nations.

Uefa sources have told the Guardian that the idea was one of several floated at the meeting as part of a discussion about how to improve the attractiveness of international football from 2018 onwards. The Uefa executive committee will now examine the idea in more detail before deciding whether to adopt it.

The new concept, first revealed by Norwegian paper Dagbladet, would see all Uefa's members divided into a series of perhaps nine divisions based on their recent results, with promotion and relegation following each round of matches.

The winner of the first division would be Uefa's Nations League champion and win a substantial prize, with the bottom team in each division being relegated in favour of the winner of the tier below.

The Norwegian FA president, Yngve Hallen, who sits on UEFA's national committee for international tournaments, said: "It is true that a series of games is one of the models being discussed."

The discussions are taking place against a backdrop of concern that the qualifying campaigns for the expanded European Championships from 2016 will prove less attractive because there will be less jeopardy.

In conjunction with other Uefa innovations due to be introduced from 2014 onwards, including its "week of football" in which qualifiers will take place across six days to maximise viewers, the drive from its HQ in Nyon is to boost the profile of the international game.

Uefa has recently taken central control of TV rights for the competitive qualifying matches of all its member nations, promising large underwritten guarantees to the biggest countries. That has increased the pressure on Uefa to bring in funding from TV and commercial partners in order to meet them.

If the Uefa Nations League idea is explored further, then the European governing body would be likely to look to centralise the TV and marketing rights in the same way as it has for the Champions League.

"The success of the Champions League has already inspired the Europa League. This is also something they are trying to look at in connection with the Nations League - how this can sharpen the market. That's what this is largely about," said Hallen.

"But there have been very clear political guidelines from all 54 federations that the focus needs to be on the football/competitive aspect. All countries should have equal opportunities," he added.

"No-one should have to qualify for this tournament - everyone plays from the first game. And then there is also a recognition that tournament form should be easy to understand for most people. All this we need to work out."

The Swedish FA representative Karl-Erik Nilsson told Aftonbladet that "it has been established that it is difficult to get interest around friendlies".

"For 2020 it has been looked at whether it would be possible to combine traditional qualifiers with with this league format, instead of friendlies, to increase interest," he said.

"It is worth looking at but we were clear that it can't have an impact on the qualifiers for the Euro tournaments. The qualifiers are No1 and have the highest priority. There won't be more international games because of this."

He said the initial reaction among the 54 members was that "creating more interest is not something negative".

Nilsson added: "All 54 members were in Croatia and the idea was presented from a perspective of: is this worth looking at? And the overall feeling was: 'let's look at it but don't let it have an impact on the qualifiers'."

He said that one idea included in the presentation was to divide the groups so that clubs next to one another in the Fifa rankings were grouped together, while another version envisaged a geographical structure.

The FA and the other big European associations may be among the most difficult to convince of the merits of the plan, because they would have to give up the possibility of lucrative friendlies against big South American sides.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/oct/10/uefa-internationals-nations-league-friendlies

Thoughts on this? It doesn't appear much of an exciting prospect to me.

So basically a "super league" consisting of International teams.

International football is getting more and more unpopular with every year. I don't know how fans will react to such competition.

Personally, i am not in favour of it.

They need to reduce the amount of club games, its too much. 38 games seasons, + champions league group stage + other competitions is just overkill. Reduce it and club + international football can intertwine more easily

Not sure majority will agree with reducing Club games though. Specially for an International tournament

If you look at club football, and look at international football, its pretty clear which has taking more than its fair share.

Anyway it doesn't matter about international football, it should be reduced for its own good. The players get worked too much, they aren't machines

I like the idea. And I also agree there should be less club matches (at least in England) anyway, clubs play in a national cup (two in some leagues), the domestic league, plus maybe one European league. That's enough.

Scrap the international friendlies and make it a league for NT sides, I actually love it. Just make it have 3 brackets, seed the teams into it by FIFA coefficient for the first season, and after that have them slug it out, with best and worst 3 teams pro-/demoted each season. At least we'd get to watch more internationals that actually matter.

It'd be cool if it was a world wide competition. I don't know if it could be done without major scheduling headaches but distance shouldn't be that big of a problem considering friendlies are played all over the world.

DuringTheWar wrote:They need to reduce the amount of international games, its too much. World Cup games and eurocup , + World Cup and Eurocup qualifications + friendlies is just overkill. Reduce it and club + international football can intertwine more easily

There, fixed it for you.

free_cat wrote:

DuringTheWar wrote:They need to reduce the amount of international games, its too much. World Cup games and eurocup , + World Cup and Eurocup qualifications + friendlies is just overkill. Reduce it and club + international football can intertwine more easily

There, fixed it for you.

I understand, it might be different for you, and you might prefer to scrap it altogether given your history, but I look forward to my country playing. Is it hard to appreciate that international football means a lot to other people? And it is the sheer volume of club games that leads to the injuries and fatigue that everyone complains about whenever an international break rolls around

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idiotic idea... the timespan of 6 teams having to play each other on top of playing international qualifications and intercontinental friendlies would be at least two years, probably more, so why even bother when you have the euro where everyone and their mother already participate... secondly, nobody would watch the matches beyond the first group, maaaaybe first two at a stretch... spain, germany, italy, france, netherlands, england; portugal, and... switzerland? belgium? sounds incredibly exciting... not to mention the inevitable group 4 or 5 which would probably consist of latvia, albania, slovakia and finland playing each other... just shoot me now

" simplicity is the greatest form of authentication"- Vinci

" Too much innovation is Catastrophic-" 48 laws of power..


simple, reduce NT games or just leave it as it is..

Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

Collblanc wrote:Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

That's because you hate your country.

If there is any humor in the world, they will call it the "League of Nations"...

 

Natalie Portman wrote:

Collblanc wrote:Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

That's because you hate your country.

Says the Canadian who's claimed support for England, Denmark, Germany, and Iran but never actually Canada...

I love NT play and most everyone i know does too... that's the most emotional games for me.  

I think Europa should be scrapped and secondary domestic cups too.  Also, make every top league into a 18 team competition as opposed to 20 (some are already at 18).

Then you can implement this, no problem.  

It could replace WCQ and Euro Qualifying for UEFA countries.  In fact, you could scrap the Euro all together and just make this the new annual Euro. So you're not really adding anything.

RedOranje wrote:

Natalie Portman wrote:

Collblanc wrote:Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

That's because you hate your country.

Says the Canadian who's claimed support for England, Denmark, Germany, and Iran but never actually Canada...

I am not Canadian though. I just have lived here for most of my life. That's why I don't give a flack about Hockey.

I wish Canada well in sports (same I do with Poland and Denmark), because they've given me something important, but I don't 100% whole-heartedly passionately support them.

Pedram wrote:

Collblanc wrote:Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

You don't care about world cups ?

My country doesnt play in world cups so no.

Collblanc wrote:

Pedram wrote:

Collblanc wrote:Scrap it all together please. Never cared about nationals.

You don't care about world cups ?

My country doesnt play in world cups so no.

Exactly. If it was a household country, then you'd be very excited about it.

Anyone who dismisses International football should see the scenes and reactions in Azteca last night, or in Iceland now that they are one win away from play-offs. or many many other unreal and beautiful scenes that are about to come now that it's crunch time.

I had NEVER , EVER seen Zlatan so emotional and happy after scoring a goal than I did last night when he scored the winner vs. Austria late in the game. It was so weird seeing Zlatan so excited

Definitely not in favour of this at all


I like International tournaments, well the major ones anyway
But this will mess with Club football, fatigue and injure players and even take away some of the glamour of a World Cup for me

Considering all of the best teams would regularly be playing against each other anyway

Terrible idea. Club football deserves to be the priority, and this would not be good for clubs at all.