Future tournaments

[Cymro]

I am in favour of expanding the European Championships to 24 teams. There are more new football nations being formed all the time so realistically for both Wales and Ireland it's just going to get harder and harder to qualify. Take Montenegro for example-I reckon they'd give us a good game, and there is even talk of some of Spain's autonomous communities trying for status as a football nation. We beat the Basques 1-0 in a friendly a while back, but in my opinion those regions would be able to put out very capable teams.

And just for the record, the Liberty stadium holds 22,500, which is not enough to host a European Championships match as you need 30,000. However, this could be expanded.

[danonion]

They may as skip the qualification and make it a 56 team tournament if they are goign to expand to 24 teams. Euro 2004 was dire enough (escept watching Barthez save Beckham's penalty hee hee). Only the total rubbish wouldn't qualify with 24 teams. You add the likes of dIreland and Wales in their current states its going to add SFA to the tournament for anyone besides Wales and ourselves, we are not playing football at a level where we wouldl compete in the group stage of a tourament right now. I'd rather see us get stuff in order and earn our place at Euro 2008/12/16.

[SuperDave]

They may as skip the qualification and make it a 56 team tournament if they are goign to expand to 24 teams. Euro 2004 was dire enough (escept watching Barthez save Beckham's penalty hee hee). Only the total rubbish wouldn't qualify with 24 teams. You add the likes of dIreland and Wales in their current states its going to add SFA to the tournament for anyone besides Wales and ourselves, we are not playing football at a level where we wouldl compete in the group stage of a tourament right now. I'd rather see us get stuff in order and earn our place at Euro 2008/12/16.

brian glanville - you should only be allowed to take part if you stand a reasonable chance of winning. fair 'nuff.

[cavan_fan]

brian glanville - you should only be allowed to take part if you stand a reasonable chance of winning. fair 'nuff.

Bad argument. This ireland team is better than the Greek team which won it

[Cymro]

Bad argument. This ireland team is better than the Greek team which won it

It certainly wasn't when we played you, and I doubt Greece's neighbours Cyprus would agree either. That Greek side was extremely well organised, something which Ireland are not. They also had a prolific centre-forward in Charisteas, again, something Ireland have not got.

As for the argument that the tournament standards would go down if you expanded to 24 teams-I disagree, given that at present there are always very tight contests over second and third places, sometimes with three or more teams involved.

If you say, expanded qualification to the top three in each group it wouldn't make it much less competitive than it is now.

[Soper]

16 Goals in 58 matches is not prolific!!

[Cymro]

16 Goals in 58 matches is not prolific!!

Fair enough, but during Euro 2004 he pretty much scored all their goals. It was the Greek team in that specific tournament that was being referred to.

They've done **** all since that though.

[Bungle]

If it was expanded to 24 teams the standard wouldn't go down at all. As it stands there are a number of very decent teams that miss out on qualification, especially when one of the hosts is Austria.

As I said earlier teams like Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, Denmark, Bulgaria and even us are all teams that could potentially miss out on next summers event. None of these teams would drag the standard down too much!!