WILL THE NATIONS LEAGUE SAVE INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL?
UEFA admits it has neglected international football outside qualifiers but has a plan up its sleeve to reinvigorate the game by replacing friendlies
The combined might of the Premier League and the Champions League has served to put international football firmly in the shadows in recent seasons.
Once every couple of years the senses are reawakened with a major tournament finals but, in between, the European Championship and World Cup qualifiers are largely humdrum affairs.
And the less said about the current state of international friendlies the better.
“UEFA had been developing the Euro final tournament but not been focusing or doing anything for the matches which involve all national teams,” UEFA deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti told Goal.
“The Euro is just for those few who qualify but the bread and butter for the national teams is qualification matches.
“Nothing had been done since the middle of the 2000s so we thought that we needed to dedicate to national teams the same attention that had been dedicated to the clubs.
“To build something, to bring about a competition with identity and with branding which could break through even more with the fans.”
Uefa Nations League explainer
While the day-to-day dramas provided by the super-rich club teams command the majority of the attention there is still space for international football between tournaments. To deliver those games a shot in the arm, UEFA has initiated the Nations League.
Those worthless friendlies, for the most part, will be replaced by competitive matches between evenly-ranked teams with the prospect of promotion, a trophy and even a second chance at qualifying for Euro 2020 at stake.
The structure of the competition will also ensure that the bigger teams will still have the space needed to plan lucrative and glamourous friendlies against esteemed opponents.
Starting next September, following the conclusion of the World Cup in Russia, the Nations League will take pride of place in the European international football calendar. Matches will be meaningful and competitive. Regulations will ensure that substitutions will be limited to three and players capped for the first time in the Nations League will be deemed to be cap-tied.
“The Nations League has a set of regulations which is absolutely similar, except the formal part, to the regulations of the qualifiers," said Marchetti.
“These are competitive matches which are regulated by rules which are practically the same.”
This is a brand new competition, with a new identity and trophy to match, and one which UEFA feels will drag upwards the standards of the international game in comparison to that on offer in the Champions League and Europa League.
“National teams and clubs are the two souls of football,” Marchetti said. “The two are equally important. You can’t have national teams without the clubs and vice versa. And the fans hugely enjoy both.
Gareth Bale Wales Georgia 09102016
“There was huge potential for the competitions for national teams to be improved and we have been trying to bring to the surface what could be done.
“And in doing this, especially regarding the European qualifiers, we have used some of the recipes which have been tested in other competitions and which work very well.”
UEFA's attention has been focused on the club game for a long time, with the Europa League launching in 2009 and the Champions League restructuring in time for next season. Furthermore there have been significant changes to the European Championship format, with the expansion to 24 teams and the implementation of the “week of football” for the qualification matches.
“Today, what is possible was not possible before,” Marchetti said. “An English fan who was also interested in watching France, Spain, Italy, Germany etc in the past had a problem because all these teams played at the same time as each other.
“Today if England play on Thursday, most probably Spain play on Friday and all the other teams. We think that this is a good service to the fans, the football lovers who like their team and who also like to see the matches played by other teams.”
Friendlies have largely been left to flounder with national associations deciding among themselves who to play. Now, though, UEFA has moved to stop the neglect.
“We have to make the best possible use of the calendar so that the fans know exactly who’s playing when and they have the possibility to get access to as many matches as possible,” said Marchetti.
“Which is what we are doing currently with the concept of the week of football where between Thursday and Tuesday all matches are spread and the television broadcasters are able to buy the rights.”
Dembele Mbappe France England
All the UEFA-affiliated teams will be split into four leagues – A, B, C and D – depending on their coefficient rankings on October 11. That marks the conclusion of the current World Cup qualification schedule excluding the playoff dates. Nations League matches will be played during the September, October and November international windows next year with Euro 2020 qualification commencing in March 2019.
League A will feature Europe’s 12 best teams split into four groups of three teams. The next 12 teams as per the coefficient will be placed in League B – again in four groups of three. Fifteen teams – one group of three and four groups of four – will play in League C. The remaining 16 teams – four groups of four – will make up League D.
Teams will play either four or six Nations League games depending on group size. The four group winners from League A will go forward to the Nations League Finals to be held in June 2019 – two semi-finals, a third-place match and a final. The host nation for these matches will be decided in December.
Group winners from Leagues B, C and D will be promoted while those who finish last in Leagues A, B and C will be relegated. The groups will be drawn in January 2018. Nations League rankings will then be used to sort the draw pots for subsequent European qualification stages.
“The next qualification process as far as UEFA is concerned, the seeding of the teams will be based on the ranking of the Nations League and no longer on the coefficient,” said Marchetti.
Furthermore, the Nations League will give four teams another chance at qualifying for Euro 2020 through playoff matches scheduled for March of that year.
For the Euros there will be 10 qualification groups from which the top two teams will qualify giving a total of 20. The other four places will be contested by the 16 Nations League group winners.
Eden Hazard Belgium
That should sort out the twin issues of the qualification phases being too long and friendlies not counting for enough. In the longer term, though, there is still little opportunity for UEFA to influence the so-called FIFA calendar and condense the qualification stages to a brief period at the end of the European league season.
“First of all the national teams can only play in the international windows,” said Marchetti. “From experience I can tell you that the international calendar is a very sensitive and delicate matter. It is a very high point of balance which is to be struck between clubs, their leagues and the national teams.
“Obviously everything can be reviewed, improved, certainly I know that this calendar was a balance not easy to be struck. If in the future there will be a review, we will see. For the time being obviously this is not possible because we are not the masters of the calendar.
“The calendar is a worldwide one. UEFA cannot unilaterally decide to play national teams matches on different days or in clusters in June or another period of the year. If there is a new calendar, this calendar will have to be negotiated by the main stakeholders around the world.
“The calendar is the FIFA international calendar. Obviously, everyone has a stake, the confederations of course, the national associations, the competitions, the domestic leagues and the clubs.”
But the Nations League is a start; a chance for UEFA to breathe life back into a moribund international game.
If Sergio Aguero’s birth had been arduous enough for his parents, naming him proved almost as difficult. Adriana and Leonel had wanted to give him the middle name Lionel, but Buenos Aires’ list of approved names only contained ‘Leonel’, meaning the youngster had to settle, just as his father had done 20 years beforehand, for a different spelling.
That was not the only problem they had. Although he now goes by the name Sergio Leonel Aguero Del Castillo, only his mother’s surname, Aguero, appears on the birth certificate. Argentine law considered both Adriana and Leonel minors at the time of Sergio’s birth, and as they were also unmarried, only the mother was allowed to be recorded as a parent.
Adriana and Leonel tried to rectify this four years after Sergio’s birth, but they needed perfect copies of their national identity documents. They had been lost in the floods that so nearly led to Adriana losing her first son, and the issue has never been officially rectified.
Credit: Born to Rise
Credit: Born to Rise
But no amount of South American bureaucracy can rob Sergio’s parents of the satisfaction of knowing their decisions and sacrifices allowed their son to reach the very top.
Two years after his first appearance at El Rojo’s Doble Visera stadium, the Argentine press began to take notice of Kun, with a report in Cronica highlighting him as “a player you could put your mortgage on going on to have a successful future”.
That was almost literally what one of Europe’s biggest clubs were willing to do.
“I believe that one of the most important points of Sergio’s story was his parents’ decision-making ability,” says Daniel Fresco, who spoke to virtually every significant figure in Sergio’s life while working on his official biography, Born to Rise.
“When he was barely 13 years old, Leo and Adriana were presented with a mind-boggling offer to sign Kun from Juventus. Even though they had already started to receive some monetary compensation from a local businessman who was investing on Kun’s potential, the family still had many needs. It was very hard to reject the offer.”
Yet reject it they did, and they soon decided, with the encouragement of investors Samuel Liberman and Jose Maria Astarloa, that Sergio would need more experienced representatives. At the age of 14 he was signed to international management company IMG, and advisors who look after him to this day.
The agreement with IMG also sparked the first of two whirlwind periods during Kun’s teenage years.
As well as providing the family with a new and bigger house, IMG helped the youngster sign up with Nike. Then, three days after his 15th birthday and in another kind twist of fate, he was fast-tracked to Independiente’s reserves by their new manager, a former youth coach he had impressed years earlier.
Within a month Sergio would become the youngest ever player to appear in an Argentine Primera Division match.
“It all happened very quickly,” is the best way Aguero, speaking exclusively to Goal, can explain it now.
Within a fortnight he found himself making up the numbers in first-team training. The next day he played for the reserves, and the day after that he played against the first team in a training match. It was then that he was asked if he wanted to be on the bench for the next league game, against San Lorenzo.
Of all the coincidences and quirks of fate that have marked Aguero’s career, there is one that he remembers particularly fondly: “When I debuted here at Manchester City, I had the No.16 shirt and I came on for Nigel De Jong, who was No.34,” he says enthusiastically. “When I debuted at Independiente, I had the No.34, and I came on for the guy who had the No.16.”
Pablo Zabaleta, now a close friend of Sergio’s, was in the San Lorenzo team that day, while the game was also Independiente hero Gabi Milito’s final appearance for the club before he moved to Europe - similarly to how the first game Sergio attended as a fan was the final game Hernan Crespo played for River Plate before moving to Parma.
Yet perhaps the most interesting detail about Sergio’s debut is that it was watched on television, 300 kilometres away, by a young Lionel Messi. Not ‘Leonel’ Messi, you may have noticed; authorities in Rosario did allow the ‘Lionel’ spelling, meaning the Messi family did not have the same problems as Sergio’s parents. Spookily, however, Jorge Messi had actually intended to call his son ‘Leonel’, only for a mix-up during the registration process.
Messi, having already moved to Barcelona, was back in Argentina on holiday when he saw Aguero make his record-breaking debut, something which has stayed with him forever.
NEYMAR DEMANDS BARCELONA BE KICKED OUT OF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE OVER €26M BONUS REFUSAL
The dispute between the Catalan club and their former Brazilian forward over loyalty payments continues to rumble on
Neymar has called on UEFA to expel Barcelona from the Champions League in a dispute over an outstanding loyalty payment.
Goal understands the Brazil international's legal team made the request to European football's governing body as part of the ongoing row with his old club.
Neymar 14/1 to be CL top scorer
It is understood UEFA is yet to respond to the letter from Neymar's camp.
The 25-year-old left Barca for Paris Saint-Germain in August for a world-record fee of €222 million, less than a year after signing a new five-year contract at Camp Nou.
The player's entourage insist he is owed a €26m loyalty bonus stipulated in that contract extension and FIFA confirmed in August that they are investigating an official complaint from the former Santos star against Barca.
Neymar Brazil
The Liga side have refused to pay it on the grounds that the forward breached the terms of his deal by holding talks with PSG over a move to France.
The club launched a separate case in August to demand the return of the "renewal premium" paid to Neymar when he signed his last contract.
Barca are asking for the return of €8.5m, plus 10 per cent in arrears, and say PSG must pay the sum if Neymar is unable.
