Nutcases in Nyon; Zanies in Zurich

The Europa Nations Cup; what's that all about, eh? Goodness knows, but here's something I penned about it in the new issue of Stand -:

You’ve really got to hand it to FIFA and UEFA; the furthest excesses of human imagination simply could not have come up with such a pair of dysfunctional administrative bodies as these two unnatural disaster areas. Patently unfit to rule over the global game, the brazen behemoths immaculately synthesize corruption, avarice, incompetence and stupidity with such effortless style. In fact, if Trump’s inner circle and May’s cabinet (subject to the usual seismic, hourly changes of evil, rapacious, shape-shifting personnel of course) swapped jobs with the nutcases in Nyon and zanies in Zurich, they couldn’t do a worse job than in their current roles. In fact, I doubt any of us would notice the difference.

Before I’m accused of shooting fish in a barrel by picking on such easy targets as the sycophantic and scheming suits, who may well have the kind of self-awareness that makes them accept their utter otiosity, despite radiating the kind of personal arrogance not seen since the decline of the Mayan Royal Family, let me point out this really does need to be said. The truth is, since the joyously unexpected, high water mark of the World Cup, the game’s governing bodies have once more made international football a brutal, tortuous test of endurance. I’m not just saying that as a fan of the team mismanaged by Martin O’Neill, who has failed to bring his tactics out of the Palaeolithic era, whereby the consecutive 0-0s with the North and then Denmark in mid-November served as the best argument for the end of partition since Bernadette Devlin floored Reginald Maudling with a left hook in the House of Commons. I’m saying that as someone who has come to the conclusion that UEFA are more interested in quadratic equations, algebraic formulae and the more arcane elements of calculus than football.

Can it really be 9 months since the World Cup started? Despite the apocalyptic predictions of dystopian street warfare, we ended up with the best tournament in several generations. Almost every team could attack, but hardly any of them could defend, while referees turned were wise to the kind of reprehensible playacting that makes you shout at the telly like your old fella watching Rodney Marsh take theatrical tumbles at Maine Road in late 72. The whole competition was great, from start to finish. In fact, I even overheard people, basking in the afterglow of a month’s worth of quality free-to-air football, expressing enthusiasm for the 2020 European Championships, which is where things become difficult. Indeed, trying to get my head around the complexities of a competition that was recently happy to have 8 finalists in 2 groups of 4, reminded me of the days before pocket calculators, when we old campaigners had to slog through Maths O Level with only a set of log tables to help us. And if you complained all you heard was “be thankful you don’t have to use a slide rule,” whatever that was…

To understand the 2020 European Championships, you first need to understand the complexities of the European Nations Cup.  There are 55 countries playing in UEFA’s shiny new tournament, including Israel, presumably to upset Momentum members, and Turkey, who were the only country to express a firm wish to host the 2020 European Championships, despite most of their stadia being in Asia. Don’t expect logic from UEFA; the fact is, they’re more likely to carry out their long promised financial fair play sanctions against Man City and PSG than have a proper grasp of geography. These 55 countries were ranked in order and split into 4 Leagues, named from A to D in a 12, 12, 15, 16 division. Further to that, Leagues A and B were split into 3 team and Leagues C and D into 4 team groups, with everyone playing each other home and away. In Leagues A to C, the bottom sides got relegated and in Leagues B to D, the top teams went up.  

Relegated from League A	Promoted from League B	Relegated from League B	Promoted from League C	Relegated from League C	Promoted from League D
Croatia	Bosnia	Ireland	Finland	Albania	Belarus
Germany	Denmark	N. of Ireland	Norway	Estonia	Georgia
Iceland	Sweden	Slovakia	Scotland	Lithuania	Kosovo
Poland	Ukraine	Turkey	Serbia	Slovenia

In June, the 4 League A group winners, namely the questionable quartet of England, courtesy of a 12 minute window of adequacy home to Croatia, Holland, who made Germany the new crash test dummies of the continent, Switzerland, after they’d eviscerated a cruising Belgian side,  and Portugal, the first team to qualify, who were also the only country to express any vague interest in hosting a festival of somnolence that knocks spots off even the Confederations Cup in terms of irrelevance, play each other in mini tournament  at the far western edge of the Iberian peninsula, made up of a pair of semi-finals, a final and a 3^rd place play off in early June. Does that sound like a pointless and pointlessly confusing tournament to you? Well, wait until you find out about the qualification process for 2020, which begins in March 2019 and ends in November 2019.

Now, as a Newcastle fan I’ve no intrinsic objection to baffling tournaments with recherche qualification criteria; after all, our last 2 trophies were the 1969 Fairs Cup and the 2007 Inter Toto Cup. However, I’ve really got to take my hat off to UEFA and put my thinking cap on to comprehend this work of inconsequential complexity. Having failed to find a credible host nation for the tournament, the game’s top brass decided instead on 11 host cities, spread from Dublin to Baku and Glasgow to Bucharest, before the semis and final finish up at Wembley, presumably as it’s the biggest ground available. The shrouded this desperate ploy in a tissue of horseshit that proclaimed UEFA were doing their bit to take the international game to every corner of the continent. Yeah, righto…

If that sounds unwieldy, then listen to this; despite not having announced where the group stages will take place, during which the 24 qualifying teams will be whittled down to 16 for the knock out stage, only 20 of the 24 spots for the finals will from the main qualifying process, leaving four spots still to be decided. The 55 teams will be drawn into 10 groups after the UEFA Nations League (five groups of five teams and five groups of six teams, with the four UEFA Nations League Finals participants guaranteed to be drawn into groups of five teams), with the top two teams in each group qualifying. The draw seeding will be based on the overall rankings of the Nations League, which was supposedly the incentive for countries in the bottom tiers not to treat the Nations League like the sporting equivalent of Comic Relief, where everyone turns up in shit Fancy Dress and nicks off early to the pub. What a great reward for all the perennial UEFA minnows though; only 8 hammerings instead of 10. They’ll be dancing in the streets of Vaduz and Auchtermuchty because of that.

So, and this is the really great bit, following the qualifying group stage, the qualifying play-offs will take place in March 2020. The 16 teams of the remaining 35 with the best record in the Nations League get split into 4 “paths” (I’m not making this terminology up you know), based on the 4 qualifying Leagues for the Nations League, with the winners of each “path” needing to come through a pair of 2 leg ties to get a place in the Euros. There will be a “path” made up from each of Leagues A to D countries who finished third, fourth or perhaps lower in the 10 Euro 2020 qualifying groups. We’ve gone from the simplicity of the beautiful game, to a kind of speed-dating repêchage meets pass the parcel, whereby the likes of Moldova and Cyprus will grind out a pair of attritional 0-0 draws and an interminable penalty shootout, for the honour of securing a chance to be pasted by Belgium or France.

Frankly, we may as well do away with domestic leagues if all we’re going to be doing is attempting to qualify for tournament finals 365 days a year. After all, there’s the small matter of the next UEFA Nations League in 2021, before we get to the sporting epicentre of venal corruption, when we all head to the pop-up tournament built on the spilled blood and unmarked graves of forced migrant labour; Qatar 2022.

Curiously, an end to the mundane treadmill of domestic football is probably something FIFA’s Grand Poobah Gianni Infantino would be pleased to introduce. You see the problem with the meritocratic principle in football is that it occasionally produces unpleasant results, like Leicester winning the title and gate-crashing the Champions’ League cartel, or Real Madrid having a crap season and looking likely to miss out on qualification. Clearly, this is not what the storied legions of sponsors want. You’d find the monolithic football corporations operating in Spain, England and Italy, though one hopes not Germany whose laws demand purity in both beer production and football club ownership, are vehemently opposed to uninvited outsiders trying to get their snouts in the trough and feet under the table. For Manchester City and Paris St Germain, their particular interpretation of the concept of Financial Fair Play is keeping as much cash as they can for themselves and cutting their floundering domestic rivals adrift. What the avaricious football megacorps want is a semi-hermetically sealed European Super League, to maximise income streams and avoid the minimal prospect of any team of talented outsiders upsetting the apple cartel by the vulgar expedient of actually daring to win something that should, by divine right, belong exclusively to the big boys. And don’t you just know that if this ever got off the ground, Ajax, Benfica, Celtic and a school of big fish from tiny ponds would be demanding a European Super League second tier.   

Thankfully FIFA, in the shape of Le Grand Fromage Infantino are dead against such plans, as the last thing FIFA wants is a breakaway European Super League. Infantino has announced himself ready to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted Corinthianism in our sport with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of FIFA fair play, by banning for life any players who take part in such a competition. Fantastic to see a footballing reference to Colombia that relates to the 1948 El Dorado financial fiasco that led to bans for Alberto Di Stefano, Charlie Mitten and Neil Franklin, rather than a sordid tabloid confessional by a failed second tier starlet who lost it all after he was caught on CCTV doing bugle off his credit club in the bogs of a Droitwich nitespot.

Of course, there is nothing remotely honourable about FIFA’s opposition. The thing is, Saint Gianni reckons he has the solution to all the game’s ills; we simply need a FIFA club World Cup. After all, we all know just how fabulously successful and widely ignored the annual World Club Championships have been. In fact, the only time it ever crossed my consciousness was when Man Utd dropped out the FA Cup and the third round got played before Christmas in 1999/2000. That was a bad idea and was never replicated. Same as the dismal Premier League experiment of playing the Cup Final before the closing round of league games. Other than the play-offs, I can’t think of a single administrative bright idea that has done the game any tangible good, unlike playing modifications like giving attackers the benefit of the doubt for offsides and banning keepers picking up back passes.

There’s a lesson in all of this; if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Now close your eyes and remember Germany imploding against South Korea or Belgium storming away to get the winner in the Japan game. That’s what football is about; poetry not maths. Keep it simple. Keep it clean.