UEFA Nations League: European football in a new avatar
The upcoming UEFA Nations League will be contested between the men’s national teams of the 55 member nations of UEFA, the administration body of football in Europe, writes Sridhar Venkatesh.
3 Feb 2018 4:00 PM GMT
This year, football enthusiasts will eagerly look forward to the 21st edition of the FIFA World Cup, to be hosted by Russia between June 14 and July 15. In the run-up to the world's most viewed sports tournament, the hosts have had their fair share of controversies, ranging from issues of doping, corruption and geopolitical conflict. Additionally, the failure of some very high profile national teams to qualify for the tournament has left many fans heartbroken. European giants like four-time World Cup winners Italy and three-time runners-up Netherlands will be conspicuous by their absence in Russia later this year. Other notable absentees at the FIFA World Cup will be 2017 Africa Cup of Nations winners Cameroon, defending Copa América champions Chile, 2016 OFC Nations Cup winners New Zealand and 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup champion United States. But suffice to say that the absence of Netherlands and Italy will be the most talked about topic for the rest of the year.
Luckily, for lovers of the European style of football, a new tournament is set to begin, not long after the World Cup ends, which promises to be exciting and guarantees regular international football matches. The upcoming UEFA Nations League will be contested between the men's national teams of the 55 member nations of UEFA, the administration body of football in Europe.
The inaugural edition of the UEFA Nations League will be played between September 2018 and June 2019. The league phase of the tournament – which will be played in round-robin format – will take place between September 6 and November 20 this year, while the Finals – which include the semi-finals, third place play-off and final – will be held in June 2019.
The format of the biennial tournament was approved by the UEFA Executive Committee in December 2014, as per which the 55 teams have been divided into four divisions, called 'leagues', based on their UEFA rankings as of November 2017. League A and League B consist a total of 24 teams, with the top 12 teams in the UEFA rankings placed in League A and next 12 teams placed in League B. League C consists of 15 European teams, between the ranks 25 and 39, and finally League D consists 16 of the bottom 55 teams in the UEFA rankings.
Each league is then divided into four groups of three or four teams, such that each team plays four or six matches within its group (using the home-and-away round-robin format). These round robin matches will take place in September, October and November this year.
League A is divided into four groups, each having three teams selected in no particular order within their League. The winners of each of the four groups from League A will enter the Nations League Finals, which will take place in the summer of 2019, once the entirety of the group phase (including matches of the other Leagues) concludes.
The group winners from League A will compete in single-legged semi-finals, the winners of which will compete in the finale on June 9 to decide the Nations League champion. But what does the competition mean for the teams other than the group winners of League A?
While the second-placed teams in the four groups of League A will have nothing to win or lose, the third-placed teams will be relegated to League B. As a result, the four third-placed teams will compete in League B in the subsequent edition of the UEFA Nations League, which will take place in the 2020-2021 season.
Coming back to the 2018-2019 season, League B will function in a way similar to League A, in that League B will also be divided into four groups of three teams each. However, the winners of each group in League B will earn promotion to League A, by virtue of which they will compete in League A in the 2020-2021 season.
Meanwhile, League D will be divided into four groups of four teams each and the winner of each group will gain promotion to League C for the 2020-2021 edition of the Nations League. The bottom-placed team in each group, however, will not be relegated further.
The relegation system for League C, however, will function differently. This League is divided into four groups, with Group 1 having three teams and Groups 2, 3 and 4 having four teams each. As is common for the other three Leagues, the top four teams in each League C group will be promoted to League B for the 2020-2021 season. This League too will see four teams being relegated. While the fourth-placed teams in Groups 2,3 and 4 will be directly relegated to League D, the fourth relegation-bound team will be one of the four third-placed teams in the four groups. Among these four third-placed teams, the relegation-bound team will be the one with the lowest points. If the points criteria is not applicable, the relegation-bound team will be decided on the bases of goal difference, or goals scored, or away goals scored, or number of wins, or number of away wins or fair play points or finally the UEFA team rankings.
The objective of the Nations League is to reduce the number of meaningless international friendly matches and reduce the burden on footballers. There will still be time for nations to play friendlies, particularly in the build-up to World Cups and European Championships.
The logo of the Nations League competition represents all 55 UEFA national associations competing within the promotion/ relegation format is elegantly wrapped around a flagpole. On January 24, the trophy for the competition was revealed on stage at Lausanne, Switzerland, by UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin, just prior to the draw of the teams.
The trophy is inspired by the competition logo, weighs in at 7.5kg and is 71cm tall. It will be lifted by its first winners in June 2019. With another exciting competition soon to begin this year, UEFA has given another reason for lovers of European football to get into game mode. This time, however, the action will be spread longer across the calendar year.
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