When I say third tier teams its not a disparaging reference, its an objective classsification of where they stand in European football. Lets look at the third tier teams for WC 2014 qualification. There are some good teams there no doubt but what has always made things interesting and competitive is that they have had to push themselves to attain second tier status in order to qualify. Ourselves being a prime example.
Expanding WC tournaments to 24 and 32 and even perhaps 36 as has been proposed, are all things that I endorse, because as it stands only 32 countries of the 206 FIFA competing countries can take part. When the Euros are expanded to 24, that will be almost half of the European countries partaking in the championships. Qualification is simply far less competitive.
I personally have always preferred the Euros (in its current format) as a spectacle and the standard of football has always been vastly superior to that of the World Cup. With the WC, inevitably teams like Saudi Arabia qualify and offer nothing in terms of raising the standard of football at the tournament. With the Euros its really like the business end of the WC, every game from start to finish is an absolute cracker.
With the proposed format for this new 24 team tournament, it will take two and a half weeks or so to finish the 6 groups and then and only then get you from 24 to 16 teams. Two weeks or so to eliminate 8 teams? In the majority of groups 3 out of the 4 teams will qualify for the knock outs. That reminds me of how uncompetitive the Munster Championship is in GAA, whereby you can win 2 games and be provincial champions. Every game will simply not have the edge that it currently has. You can lose your first two games and still be very much in contention to qualify for the final 16.
My first interest is the same as yours but I want us to qualify by virtue of being in the top 16 teams in Europe, not by virtue of being ranked from 17 to 24.
As regards your second interest, I think England are one of the elite teams in Europe and thus I want to see them compete at the top level in Europe. If Ireland are not playing and Englands result is of no consequence to our qualification prospects from any group, then their results are as inconsequential to me as a match between Italy and Russia. The "anyone but England brigade" in Ireland are about as cringey in my opinion as the NI fans writing articles rueing their defeat to Estonia as it effectively handed us qualification. Its bitter and pathetic in my opinion.
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