Originally Posted by
Stuttgart88
But if any of the 16 group winners also qualifies automatically by virtue of a 1st or 2nd place in the main qualification groups, then the play-off teams are determined by Nations League performance.
Nations League: finishes March 2019. Each division has a semi final (4 teams) and a final (2 teams obviously)
Normal qualifying: 10 groups, 20 qualification places (out of 24 in total). Top 2 in each group qualify. 4 teams must qualify via what used to be the play offs.
These "play offs" in March 2020 are a series of semi-finals (one leg each) and finals. It's very likely that actual qualifiers from the traditional route will have been among the division semi-finalists and finalists in the actual Nations Leasgue in March 2019, so a new set of divisional semi-finals will be arrived at, via "ranking" which I think means by looking across the 4 groups who has most points, then GD, GS etc.
So:
Winning or having a good run in the NL Division B would by itself be a nice thing but winning Division B also guarantees a play-off semi final as back-up for not qualifying automatically
Doing well in NL Division B is useful because you accrue ranking points which are used to seed the actual European Qualification draw
Doing well in NL Division B is also useful because it maximises your chance of a March 2020 play-off if you're lucky enough to see your group winner qualify automatically
Edit, I changed a bit of above and now adding:
UEFA:
(1) If a group winner has already qualified via the European Qualifiers, then their spot will go to the next best-ranked team in their league (so not group)
(2) If a league does not have four teams to compete, the remaining slots are allocated to teams from another league, according to the overall UEFA Nations League ranking."
What I think (1) is saying if that in League B (our league) any group winner that qualifies automatically is taken out of the possible play-off equation. So across all 4 groups in league B another team is bumped up based on looking across all 4 groups and seeing which team has got most points, then GD etc. So even if we come 3rd but Denmark and Wales qualify automatically then their spots will go to the two teams with most points in all of the 4 League B groups. It's unlikely this would be a back-door route for Ireland.
But I'm a bit unsure of what happens in (2) above if, say, League A does not have 4 teams to form a play-off semi-final, i.e., all 12(?) qualify automatically? Does this open up more places from League B, and so on down the chain? I think so, and it'd suggest to me that finishing second in any group in League B would very likely get you a play-off place because you'd have to think most of the 12 League A teams will qualify automatically and most of the remaining 8 automatic places will come from League B. So you only have to be in the top 4 of the remaining League B teams.
I haven't seen the video.