Euro 2020

[Firnen]

Back after quite a lot of time:

Decent draw for Greece given the 4th group. Italy is a blessing and a curse : they will drop points, but against whom it is random. Finland is in theory weak but we saw how it worked in the Nations League. Bosnia is weak for pot 2. I hope there is not a hooligan celebration again in our matches, the Bosnian seem to not like us at all - and no the Serbian flags by Greek fans are not a cause for fans rioting.

Bad draw for Cyprus, Scotland seems on the rise and Russia remains quite strong.

Easy groups for England, Netherlands-Germany, Croatia-Wales. The toughest are Spain's and Portugal's : Sweden, Norway, Romania and Ukraine, Serbia.

[martinjt]

Vicious draw for Gibraltar. They could have been in a pool of 6, drawn San Marino, and gained some ranking points. Now they have four tough teams above them.

[Diouf]

Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland was in the same group in the 1986 WC Qual. Denmark topped the group ahead of Soviet Union, while Switzerland finished 3rd and Ireland 4th.

Yeah I remeber it from my childhood. Interestingly Soviet Union then had several players from Georgia and one of them Sulakvelidze in the return match in Luzhhiki stadium injured Preben Elkjaer and without their best striker Denmark lost 1:0. In the first match in Parken Elkjaer and Michael Laudrup both scored twice and Denmark won 4:2. What a match it was also fantastic goal from Protasov Soviet striker.

It is before my time, but the 1985 home match against Soviet Union has a legendary status in Danish football. It was played on the Danish national day on a very hot day. The Parken stadium was completely filled; the FA said they could have sold 150.000 tickets. And then a superb performance by the Danish team in what is often called the best Danish national team game ever. The 1986 WC team remains the most popular Danish national side ever, and this game is surely one of the reasons why.

[Diouf]

Last time Denmark lost a competitive match against ROI was in 1979, there are two other friendly losses in-between (2002 & 2007) since, and some close results, but no defeats in competition.

A 0-3 defeat at Lansdowne Road Thomas Rytter, who was Danish right back in that match, is still said to have nightmares about Damien Duff who went past him again and again in that match. A great Irish side who went on to do quite well at the 2002 WC. Luckily, Denmark improved before the WC; we also missed 4-5 key players in that friendly. And poor Rytter probably lost his WC spot in that match; instead young Kasper Bøgelund was called up as the back-up right back.

[Vickzq]

There's a huge difference. Results against the sixth team are deducted from the total points and goal difference. Belgium can beat San Marino 10-0, it won't count for their ranking in the final tournament. However, if Switzerland beat Gibraltar 10-0, it will very much count for the rankings as Gibraltar will be fifth in the group and that result stays in.

No, absolutely not - that's not true, and it was exactly where I was getting to.

If a regular UEFA ranking counts to determine the seeds for a final tournament, EVERY match is taking into consideration, AS ALWAYS, simply using the respective divisor (# of matches).
Matches vs. #6 of the group are e.g. eliminated from 'rankings of runners-up', if you have to determine who was 'weakest' second place team, etc. But that is certainly not how a normal UEFA ranking works.

NEVER a match is just cancelled. Either they don't count at all - as friendlies in UEFA rankings - or they ALL count just the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_coef ... oefficient

On 20 May 2008, UEFA announced changes to the coefficient ranking system. The ranking will continue to be calculated every second year in November, but under the new system, teams now gain ranking points for each game played in the most recently completed full cycle (defined as all qualifying games and final tournament games) of both the World Cup and European Championship, with addition of ranking points for each game played at the latest completed half cycle (defined as all games played in the latest qualifying round). Ranking points for all games played inside those two and a half cycles, will be awarded according to the rules listed below.

-10,000 points are awarded for each match played, regardless of the match result.
- Each team earns an additional 30,000 for winning and 10,000 for drawing.
- In case of a game decided by penalty shoot-out, the points are allocated as a draw, with the winner of the shoot-out gaining an additional 10,000 points.
- Each match at the final tournament, or play-offs to determine qualification, are also granted bonus points, ranging from 6,000 points for all play-offs or World Cup group stage games, to 38,000 points for playing a final.
- 501 points are earned for each goal scored, and -500 are given for each goal conceded.
- Coefficients are calculated for each two and a half cycle, by dividing the sum of earned points with the number of games played.
- When calculating the overall average coefficient for the cycles, the latest full cycle and half cycle will each have double the weight, compared to the oldest full cycle.
- Special arrangements are in place for those nations that did not participate in one of the previous qualifying tournaments due to hosting the competition.

The important part is bold.

[nogomet]

There's a huge difference. Results against the sixth team are deducted from the total points and goal difference. Belgium can beat San Marino 10-0, it won't count for their ranking in the final tournament. However, if Switzerland beat Gibraltar 10-0, it will very much count for the rankings as Gibraltar will be fifth in the group and that result stays in.

No, absolutely not - that's not true, and it was exactly where I was getting to.

If a regular UEFA ranking counts to determine the seeds for a final tournament, EVERY match is taking into consideration, AS ALWAYS, simply using the respective divisor (# of matches).
Matches vs. #6 of the group are e.g. eliminated from 'rankings of runners-up', if you have to determine who was 'weakest' second place team, etc. But that is certainly not how a normal UEFA ranking works.

NEVER a match is just cancelled. Either they don't count at all - as friendlies in UEFA rankings - or they ALL count just the same.

You're way behind the curve.

The seeding procedure has been changed. UEFA national team coefficients are no more.

See this website for full details:
https://www.footballseeding.com/interna ... euro-2020/

[Vickzq]

The seeding procedure has been changed. UEFA national team coefficients are no more.

See this website for full details:
https://www.footballseeding.com/interna ... euro-2020/

Yes, I can see that sentence on that site saying 'results vs. 6th placed are not taken into account'.

But I made the 'full-lenght' run now with documents from official 'uefa.com' and linked documents... all I can find is this:
https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/draws/round=2001024/

The draw will involve the two-top finishers in the ten qualifying groups (completed in November 2019) and the eventual four play-off winners (decided in March 2020). None of the 12 host nations qualify automatically. Seedings will be based on overall rankings based on the qualifying groups by the following criteria:

a) Final position in group
b) Points
c) Goal difference
d) Goals scored
e) Away goals scored
f) Number of wins
g) Number of away wins
h) Lower disciplinary points total (3 points for red card including for second booking, 1 point for single yellow card for a player in a match)
i) Position in overall UEFA Nations League rankings (see Regulations of the UEFA Nations League)

I miss that last remark about 6th ranked teams here... so I followed 'regulations of UEFA Nations League' to check:
https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Do ... df?iv=true

D.1.1 Matches taken into consideration
All national senior team matches played in UEFA European Football Championship and FIFA World Cup qualifying competitions and final tournaments are taken into consideration. Friendly matches do not count.

This is all I found. So either I am blind and I missed it on the 60 pages document from UEFA... or that 6th ranked team elimination will not happen. I seriously hope they won't do this... it would - as you said - be a disadvantage for some teams and an advantage for others (totally unnecessary), and after all, they added the division A winners to 5-teams-groups to have 12 games each (as these winners will play also 2 extra games during final-4 in 2019 in Portugal).

[EarlofBug]

Not the easiest group, but Italy should qualify.

Poland, Austria, Israel, Slovenia, Macedonia: Porto's style group

Seriously, it's an interesting group, even Slovenia or Macedonia could end in the top 2.

Wow, Israel might be at the Euro (for the first time?)!
Poland and Austria are the favourites, but they're winnable (especially Austria), and I like the opponents from the bottom pots. It's a really interesting group.

[YAYgee]

The seeding procedure has been changed. UEFA national team coefficients are no more.

See this website for full details:
https://www.footballseeding.com/interna ... euro-2020/

Yes, I can see that sentence on that site saying 'results vs. 6th placed are not taken into account'.

But I made the 'full-lenght' run now with documents from official 'uefa.com' and linked documents... all I can find is this:
https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/draws/round=2001024/

The draw will involve the two-top finishers in the ten qualifying groups (completed in November 2019) and the eventual four play-off winners (decided in March 2020). None of the 12 host nations qualify automatically. Seedings will be based on overall rankings based on the qualifying groups by the following criteria:

a) Final position in group
b) Points
c) Goal difference
d) Goals scored
e) Away goals scored
f) Number of wins
g) Number of away wins
h) Lower disciplinary points total (3 points for red card including for second booking, 1 point for single yellow card for a player in a match)
i) Position in overall UEFA Nations League rankings (see Regulations of the UEFA Nations League)

I miss that last remark about 6th ranked teams here... so I followed 'regulations of UEFA Nations League' to check:
https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Do ... df?iv=true

D.1.1 Matches taken into consideration
All national senior team matches played in UEFA European Football Championship and FIFA World Cup qualifying competitions and final tournaments are taken into consideration. Friendly matches do not count.

This is all I found. So either I am blind and I missed it on the 60 pages document from UEFA... or that 6th ranked team elimination will not happen. I seriously hope they won't do this... it would - as you said - be a disadvantage for some teams and an advantage for others (totally unnecessary), and after all, they added the division A winners to 5-teams-groups to have 12 games each (as these winners will play also 2 extra games during final-4 in 2019 in Portugal).

You linked to the NL. I just dropped in and haven't read everything but if this is about the overall European Qualifiers ranking then have a look at article 23.01 on page 20 of this document:
https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Do ... WNLOAD.pdf

[Lorric]

On this subject, we can just use Wikipedia to keep track of all this stuff, they've already built the framework for all of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Eu ... qualifying

[AnelZ]

and no the Serbian flags by Greek fans are not a cause for fans rioting.

The by far biggest reason many fans of our national team dislike or outright hate Greece (sadly) is because of Greece good relations with Serbia. The other reason is because Greek football has an image of dirty, psychical and boring over here.

[AnelZ]

A decent group for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Who we got from Pot1 was the least important and such getting Italy as an opponent is OK, attractive side which we last played over 22 years ago (friendly at home). Finland from Pot3 is a good draw and a team we last played almost 15 years ago (friendly at home). Greece is getting a bit borring considering how often we play against them + are not that a favorable draw from pot 4 but looking on Pot3 and Pot4 together we got average sides. Armenia is probably among the better sides from Pot5 but if we want to play at EURO they shouldn't pose a problem (we played against them only in the WC 2010 qualifiers). Liechtenstein from Pot6, at least our people from Switzerland, south Germany and Austria will have a close away game.

[Vickzq]

You linked to the NL.

UEFA must be playing jokes on me there - I followed the link given on 'wikipedia' for their source from 'uefa.com'. Where they explain how they seed final EURO 2020... on their official site, when I follow that document link, it leads to the 'Nations League' document.
And the text I find on their site explaining the procedure does not say the exact same as you link does... damn UEFA.

[EarlofBug]

group E: no real strong team in here and also no real weak team...... all teams will fancy their chances

Group E looks really interesing.

group F: Spain and Sweden have a clear edge over the other teams

I think that Norway and Romania will give a tough battle to Sweden.

[Ricardo]

@Dragonite, I don’t know how your luckometer works, but is clearly working per group, as all countries of group G is on top, while all of group C are at the bottom. Why not convert this in an ‘easy’ to ‘hard’ group ranking?

So NOW you like it?!

It works exactly with the same principle than the one I used for the CL, and there you hated the outcome.

Always strange the conclusions you make from my posts.
I didn’t write anything about me liking it or not, still you conclude I like it, where did you get it from.

But you clearly agree with my remark that there are easy groups and difficult groups. And so I am happy with that, as it means that you agree (again) that there are strong groups and weak groups. Which means that the points you have is not enough to compare, as it is harder to get points in hard groups.
I am so happy you agree with me.i thought I couldn’t convince you, but so happy you agree with me now.
Best regards