Nations League changing Euro soccer landscape
Lower-ranked teams will get second path at World Cup qualifying with new format
For European teams fading out of the 2018 World Cup picture, a new opportunity opens if they lose their qualifying match this weekend. Meet the Nations League. The complex format created by UEFA to replace mostly unloved national team friendlies kicks off in 18 months’ time.
By Sunday night, for teams with slim-to-none World Cup hopes, their next meaningful match with qualification at stake might be their Nations League debut.
It offers a second-chance path to major tournaments — the 2020 European Championship for sure and, UEFA intends, the 2022 World Cup — for teams that have not qualified in a generation or ever.
For teams failing to finish in the top two of a traditional Euro 2020 qualifying group, a subsequent playoff round is based on Nations League standings.
It will send at least one of UEFA’s lowest-ranked teams to the 24team tournament.
For fans of Norway, Scotland, Armenia and Kazakhstan, it’s almost time to learn to love the Nations League.
“The friendlies really don’t interest anybody, neither the audience at large, neither the journalists nor the players,” UEFA’s then-president Michel Platini said in launching the competition in March 2014.
Top-ranked teams wanted games against each other, middle-ranked teams wanted winnable competitive games, low-ranked teams wanted hope of playing at tournaments.
Norway helped draft the Nations League plan. Its most recent tournaments were Euro 2000 and the 1998 World Cup, where it played Scotland, also enduring a two-decade tournament drought.
On Sunday, Norway and Scotland are fifth-place teams in World Cup qualifying groups facing another early exit if they lose against second-place opponents, Northern Ireland and Slovenia, respectively.
“The whole landscape of football has changed since (1998),” said Scotland federation president Alan McRae, who was at the 1-1 draw with Norway in Bordeaux, France, 19 years ago.
“(The addition of the Nations League) is very important for the smaller nations.”