The draw for the European Football Championships is help today with 53 countries fighting it out for 24 places. Some of these countries though are going to be the whipping boys of qualifying and it makes you wonder what is the point?
What will the big teams get from playing the minnows and what will the minnows get from getting hammered most games? The answer is not much.
However instead of moaning about it I have a solution. One that will ensure that all games are competitive and would also get rid of the meaningless friendlies.
My solution would be to create 5 divisions. The top division would be made up of the 10 top ranked teams on the world rankings. For the first tournament though you could rank them from the previous tournament so the quarter finalists would be the top 8, plus the 2 best group runners up.
The other divisions would be the same and done on world rankings.
How do lower teams get to compete against the better teams I hear you ask? Well we have relegation and promotion. This could be done as it is now in domestic leagues with the top 2 from each division coming up and bottom 2 going down. Or the other option could be to do a 1 leg play-off on neutral ground to see who comes up and who goes down.
The European Champions would be whoever finishes top of the top division.
I know this would be a massive change, but it would be played over a 2 year cycle, and if the World Cup was done in the same way then we would have less meaningless games.
Each team would only be playing 18 league games over 2 years which to win the tournament you normally play 10-12 to qualify. Then 3 or 4 boring friendlies in-between and then 6 in the tournament if you are the winners, so it is the same number of games.
Fans want to see exciting games, not one team struggling to get out of their own box. If UEFA and FIFA want to incorporate more teams and have meaningful international football this could be a way forward.
Club sides would have no grounds to pull players from the squads as all games are relevant.
FIFA run the game of football so the call would have to come from them, so that all leagues would have to abide by their rules.
It would also stop the silly voting process for where these tournaments are held, and also countries having to build new stadiums and having the problems Brazil seem to be having.
I cannot really see this happening in my life time or probably at all, but surely something along these lines would be more appreciated by the fans. No more wet Tuesday night games at Wembley against San Marino. Instead a wet Tuesday night at Wembley against Brazil.
Andrew Huddlestone
@ahuddlestone77