Oh God no, if you saw the discussions over here (
https://foot.ie/threads/236899-Repub...s-League/page9) you'd appreciate how complicated this is - a couple of us nearly lost our minds trying to figure it out and one important detail is still being debated. But I'll try to give the basics. There will be two ways of qualifying for Euro 2020:
1. The traditional way through the qualifiers starting in March - 10 groups - top 2 from each qualify - 20 teams
2. In March 2020, four different play-off tournaments will take place to determine the final four qualifiers, so yes there will be playoffs - the big difference is that the participants in these play-offs will not be chosen based on coming third in a group in the upcoming qualifiers. Rather they will be based on positions in the Nations League - each league will be assigned a play-off path/tournament with four participants who will play single-legged semi-finals and a final and the winner will qualify for Euro 2020 (and yes, that does mean that it is guaranteed that a team from League D will play in Euro 2020 - currently one of Belarus, Georgia, Macedonia and Kosovo, as they are the group-toppers in that league and will participate in the League D playoff path, unless one of them qualifies through the main qualifiers)
Now the assigning of the teams to these four playoff paths is where it gets really confusing but this is what we think we understand happens:
- Teams are selected for play-off paths starting with League D, then League C, then League B, then League A, with group toppers automatically included in their own League's play-off path, which is how I know the likely make-up of the League D
- If one or more group-toppers from a League have already qualified through the main qualifiers, then the next-ranked team(s) within that League, who have not already qualified, will be selected until there are four
- If there are not enough non-qualifiers left in a League (as could well happen with League A if, say, 10 have already qualified), then the next-ranked leftover team(s) in the League(s) below will be selected and this is where it gets really messy - I thought initially that the team(s) selected at this point would then be dragged up to the play-off tournament for the higher league but Stuttgart88 pointed out that this is not the case - apparently they will be put into a draw with the other selected teams from their own League, who didn't top a group, and the team(s) to be assigned to the higher League's playoff path will be drawn at random.
What does this mean for us? Well, even if we fail to get a top-two spot in the main qualifiers, there's still a very good chance that we will be participating in these play-offs in spite of our performances these past few weeks - as we are the eleventh-ranked team in League B and the 23rd-ranked overall, if fifteen or more teams from League A and League B qualify through the traditional route, then we will be selected for the play-offs as there will be a maximum of seven teams from League A and B ranked above us. But we may get dragged up to the League A play-off tournament which could feature a top team who had a poor qualifying tournament
I hope that gives some insight into how this labyrinthine process will work