And so the Euro 2024 group stages draw to a close. It’s a good time to reflect on the merits of the tournament so far. In particular, is the 24-team format good for the tournament, or not?
The tournament got off to a great start; it would be hard to argue otherwise. Germany were imperious in the opening game, and that was followed by entertaining matches with plenty of goals (lets just pretend Group C doesn’t exist, for now). Not just plenty of goals, but great goals, too. Fullkrug, Barella, Stanciu and Guler all put themselves in the frame of goal of the tournament.
From there, I think it starts to get problematic. The issue with a 24-team tournament is that one win in the group stage puts you in a very good position to qualify for the knock-out stage. Indeed, the only teams who won a game and went out where Hungary, ousted by draw-kings Slovenia, and Ukraine, who finished level on points with group winners Romania and can count themselves very unfortunate to be going home.
From the second game onwards, the tournament has become cagey, which is also what happened in 2016. We didn’t really see it in 2021, but maybe Covid had everyone feeling giddy.
The point is, there isn’t enough jeopardy, enough incentive to chase the win. If we contrast this with the 2022 World Cup, which threw up all manner of fantastic group games, I feel short-changed.
And what about the final group games? Well, there are two issues here.
First, we went into the final group games with many teams already assured of qualification. By the time they kicked off, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, England, France, Netherlands, and Portugal all knew they were effectively through, with only group position to play for (and sometimes not even that).
Second, and you have to look at the teams themselves here, there seemed to be a complete lack of urgency to actually go and win a game, despite being in need of victory to qualify. Instead, we’ve seen cagey affairs where teams have sought to ‘stay in the game’ for 70-80 minutes, before finally deciding to have a go at the end of the match. I was looking forward to Scotland v Hungary, but it took 95 minutes before they looked to take any risks.
Groups C and E in particular were dreadful, serving up low-scoring draws all around.
Overall, I feel like we’ve had isolated moments of drama late in games, but what’s gone before has been largely dull, with notable exceptions for Austria and Georgia.
Here’s hoping things improve in the knock-out stages.
And onto the World Cup
If we cast our minds forward a couple of years, we’ll be in the midst of the first 48-team World Cup.
The format of the World Cup has chopped and changed many times down the years, so moving up to 48 teams brings about another format change. Generally speaking, you need to divide the number of teams by a small number to get the number of groups. In this case, there are only two options.
The initial plan was to have 16 groups of three, with the top two from each progressing to a 32-team knockout tournament. This neatly preserved the notion of needing seven games to win the tournament, and increased the overall number of matches from 64 to 80. However, this format comes with integrity issues, as it’s impossible to play final group games simultaneously.
Organisers were also keen to preserve the drama the final group games threw up in Qatar. Which means we have 12 groups of four. This is also problematic in many ways.
First, the eight best-performing third-place teams qualify, so we’re in a similar situation to the Euros where three points and a reasonable goal difference will get you through.
Second, we need 104 games (yes, 104!). That means eight games to win the tournament, and it’s a scheduling nightmare. There are days when we will see six games being played.
Now, I love football, and I love the challenge of watching as many games as I can during summer tournaments, but this is too much.
It also stretches the tournament from a month, to five weeks, putting more pressure on an already full calendar. I’m sure mitigations such as 30-man squads and seven substitutes are possible, but these don’t really help.
But… why?
I understand the reasons in the ‘for’ column for expanding tournaments. Giving more teams the opportunity to play in them is good for the development of the game. And who could fail to appreciate the scenes after the likes of Georgia and Romania qualified for the knock-out stages of the Euros?
I don’t wish to denigrate the teams who appear at these tournaments, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that these tournaments are named ‘Finals’.
UEFA has 55 members, so a 24-team finals invites almost half. It’s too much.
A 32-team World Cup Finals caters for around 15% of FIFA members. Going up to 48 teams takes that somewhere between 20-25%.
And it’s hard to escape the underlying reason is - you guessed it - money.
More games means more TV rights money, means more sponsorship money, etc, etc.
We also have a situation within FIFA where the under-represented blocs (in terms of World Cup places) have proportionally more voting power. It’s an obvious win for any prospective FIFA president to promise more World Cup places. And of course we have crazy proposals like a biennial World Cup.
I think it’s clear we are diluting these tournaments. Not necessarily in terms of quality, but in terms of creating competitions with an incentive to win, and just sheer over-saturation.
Less is more. It’s time we grew wise to it.