Euros to expand to 24 teams in 2016

[SkStu]

This is not the CL. This is the European Championships. No byes, no elitism, and everyone is invited, the way it should be. 16 teams of 53 sounds elitist imo, 24 is right. The quality won't suffer. Most teams will be very competitive.

i had my doubts but this post makes a good case for the increase...

[gilberto_eire]

Totally against it. Cant believe UEFA are allowing this to happen.

Quality will suffer and the logistics of getting down to 8 from 24.

Keep it at 16 teams and we will see great tournaments like 2000 and 2008 (and 96 and 04 werent too bad either). If it works why break it.

If best 3rd placed teams qualify from 4 team groups you will have teams playing for three draws to get them through.

What's the point in having good tournaments if your country is'nt involved?, Should'nt a fans main concern be the participation off your home country over the standard of games which have no relevance to us?. I've always followed the assumption that watching football is about watching your favourite team, and when Ireland is'nt involved we are nothing more then spectators with no emotional involvement.

I'd rather have an emotional involvement in these tournament then see some ''good games'' involving countries i could'nt care too hoots about.

Beggers belief the amount on this thread who are opposing a system that will see THEIR country involved on the basis of ''lower standards'' of games and uneven numbers

[youngirish]

I'm not sure it would lower the quality significantly. There were only a small handful of teams at this years finals that showed any consistent level of quality throughout. Even Germany who got to the finals were a very average, strong, workmanlike team.

Besides them Italy and France two of the other big European countries were nothing short of dire. Greece, Poland, Austria, Romania and Switzerland were very poor. Sweden, the Czechs and Russia (bar one game) were average at best.

The Turks were resilient, busy and very fit but quality is not a word I'd use to describe them in any of their performaces.

Only the Dutch, Croatians, Portuguese and Spanish displayed anything that could really be described as quality. Most of the rest did not look to be significantly better than any of the teams that would be likely to qualify if the competition was increased to 24 teams even if such an idea is just another way to increase the annual coffers at UEFA headquarters every leap year.

I'm not really bothered either way. It would be nice to see the ROI team there I suppose but I'm not a big fan of the Euros anyway. I'd much rather we qualified for the World Cup.

[RogerMilla]

hugely in favour of it , I want Ireland to be there as often as possible. Delighted , to be honest.

[Morbo]

I don't think it will have a major effect on the quality and even the worst of those 24 teams will still be a lot better than the worst teams in the world cup, I'm def in favour of increasing Irelands chances and also having a few more games to watch, Euro2008 went by too fast

I think a good compromise would be to have 20 teams, have 4 groups of 5 where the 4 1st placed teams go through to the knockouts, the remaining 16 would then play in 4 groups of 4 where again the 4 1st placed teams go though to the knockouts, then 3 groups of 4 with the same rules, then 3 groups of 3 followed by 2 groups of 3 where those who finish 2nd and 3rd are eliminated, this would increase the group stages to 97 games and making the Tourny long enough to fill up the whole summer

[EalingGreen]

You always have 4 or 5 'quality' teams missing. England, Serbia, Denmark etc will qualify next time and the likes of Austria, Switzerland and Greece won't. Thats the way it works. Thats why we have qualifiers. If all the best teams SHOULD be there, well then scrap the qualifiers and just invite the 24 best teams. Maybe FIFA should have barred us from 2002 and invited the Dutch instead because they are better than us and deserve to be there. Total ******. If you're good enough you will qualify, if you're not, tough sh1t. If you're in a tough group, tough sh1t. Thats life.

16 of the best teams please, end of story.

In a nutshell!

If Ireland deserve to be there great, if we drop five points to Cyprus then we DONT deserve to be there. Im glad we didnt qualify because under Stan we would have been humiliated against every team except Austira, Greece and Swiss.

Re. NI, although we were in contention to qualify almost to the last game, and ought to have been respectable (no more) had we actually got there, in the end we didn't deserve to qualify, either - too many dropped points against the weaker teams.

Euro2008 was a great tournament, so if it ain't broke, why fix it?

[Titan]

24 teams in the finals

8 groups of 3

group winners qualify for quarters

Total number of matches 31 the same as this years event.

Stu, I dont think its as easy to fix a 3 team group with 1 qualifying so UEFA wont have to worry about a Germany V Austria scenario. That was 82 by the way!

[eirebhoy]

24 teams in the finals

8 groups of 3

group winners qualify for quarters

Total number of matches 31 the same as this years event.

Stu, I dont think its as easy to fix a 3 team group with 1 qualifying so UEFA wont have to worry about a Germany V Austria scenario. That was 82 by the way!

16 teams qualify for the knockout stage.

[EalingGreen]

24 teams in the finals

8 groups of 3

group winners qualify for quarters

Total number of matches 31 the same as this years event.

So 16 teams go all that way for just two games, so that any losing the first one by two goals or more might as well not bother turning out for their second game?

And how do you sort out the Groups which see three draws?

Can't see that format appealing to many...

[geysir]

It would be called the Quickies.

I can only think that any opposition to expansion will come from the clubs. Will they have to be bought off? Do they have any say?

We had 8 team finals from about 34 countries
then 16 teams from 48 countries in 1996
now we just have 53 countries.
The tournament is getting more and more like the Eurovision in its style.

You could say that the tournament in it's present form for football is brilliant but for fans it's one big Euro suction pump and thats the bit they want to expand at the expense of the former.

[Greenforever]

4 groups of 6 - 5 matches per country

Group winners only to qualify

Semi Finals

Final

[pineapple stu]

That was 82 by the way!

So it was!

[mypost]

4 groups of 6 - 5 matches per country

Group winners only to qualify

Semi Finals

Final

That would take about 2 months!!!!

6 groups of 4; winners, runners-up, 4 best 3rd place teams qualify, second round onwards (aka "last 16" to commentators) = knockout.

[Morbo]

For Irelands sake I'm glad its going to be 24 but I think the right amount in regards to the quality of the Tournament would be 20 teams, 5 groups of 4 with the winners of each group going though to the quarters along with the best 2nd placed team, the other 4 2nd placed teams play each other in a playoff for the remaining 2 spots in the quarters

[EalingGreen]

4 groups of 6 - 5 matches per country
Group winners only to qualify

Semi Finals

Final

Four Groups of six teams will mean that after the first 3 or 4 matches, half the teams (at least) will be completely out of contention, thereby creating a load of utterly meaningless matches to finish with. Interest will tail off completely.

The great thing about the present system is that organising 16 broadly comparable teams into Groups of Four, with the top two qualifying, is that most games in most Groups are meaningful. For example, it is possible for a team to lose its first match and still qualify with two wins, or even a win and a draw.

Expanding it to 20 or 24 teams inevitably means that the gap in quality between top and bottom teams is stretched, so there is greater scope for uncompetitive games. And anything other than two qualifying from a Group of four teams, means a much higher percentage of meaningless games.

Imo, it wasn't "broke", so can anyone supporting expansion give me any reason why we should "fix" it (other than selfishly improving their own team's chance of qualifying)?

[DaveyCakes]

Absoultely ridiculous. There's 53 teams in UEFA, so nearly half of them will be involved in the finals. The Euros have been better than world cups, because of the overall higher standard of teams in it.

What next? Scrap the qualifiers altogether and just let everyone in?

"Welcome to our exclusive coverage of San Marino versus Azerbaijan, live from the three-quarters empty Bernabeu in Madrid"

[DaveyCakes]

This is not the CL. This is the European Championships. No byes, no elitism, and everyone is invited, the way it should be. 16 teams of 53 sounds elitist imo, 24 is right. The quality won't suffer. Most teams will be very competitive.

No elitism? The whole point is to find the best team in Europe, i.e. the ELITE.

[Morbo]

What next? Scrap the qualifiers altogether and just let everyone in?

Don't be silly.
How do you split 53 teams into groups, we need to have qualifiers to eliminate 1, then we can have 13 goups of 4

[jebus]

Terrible idea, if Ireland were good enough we'd be able to qualify under the fair system that is in place now. Expanding it is just to draw in more tourist money for the host country, no other reason, certainly no football reason as the quality of this tournament shows the system works, and anyone who wants to expand it to let Ireland in is whats wrong with modern day football in my eyes. Everyone out for themselves, no one giving a crap about long term consequences to the game. The Champions League has been ruined by expanding it, the World Cup group stages are a joke due to expansion, and now we're expected to buy that this won't dilute the quality. ******** is all it is and another nail in the closing casket of football

[Closed Account 2]

There are pros and cons to any tournament expansion, but on balance I think it would be a good idea.

A lot of the teams who just missed out (e.g. Serbia, Bosnia, Belgium) are good teams and I think they could have done better than the likes of Greece (who were statistically the best qualifiers).

Latin America has arguably, team for team, the strongest level of international football. All their teams are involved in competitive football - they all get to go to the Copa America and all play each other for World Cup qualifiers (every team plays every team, the small nations like Bolivia are always going to play Brazil twice). Teams which were once poor (like Venezuela and Ecuador) are now able to compete internationally as they get the high level of exposure to quality teams. Additionally the inclusion of the likes of Mexico can improve guest teams. Even when Honduras and Japan were included in Copa Americas it gave them a chance to compete a good level and valuable experience.

On the other hand the Asian and African international competitions have a ridgid structure which usually sees the same handfull of entrants get in the the African Nations Cup and the Asia Cup. When it comes to world cup qualifiying in these regions new teams rarely break through (as they can't build up enough experience) and you have an oligarchary of mediocrity which sees whipping boys like Saudi Arabia and Tunisia at every World Cup.

I'm for it as it will give middle range UEFA nations a good level of international experience. Instead of playing one game at home or away every 2-3 months international players will get the chance to form genuine team units and have valuable tournament experience. This should even things out between UEFA nations in the long run and we may see the balance of power shift away from the old guard (Italy, Germany, France etc) and new teams come to the fore (like Bosnia, Macedonia, Israel etc) or the re-emergence of old powers (Hungary, Belgium, Russia*).

*arguably this is now happening with Russia.