UEFA to consider 24-team EURO

[dark_horse]

UEFA to consider 24-team EURO

Friday, 26 January 2007

UEFA will consider whether to make the UEFA European Championship final round a 24-team competition after its member associations backed a proposal for an immediate feasibility study into the tournament's expansion. The vote was made at the XXXI Ordinary UEFA Congress in Dusseldorf, Germany on Friday.

Target 2012

The UEFA European Championship final round was expanded from 8 to 16 teams prior to EURO 96 in England and the UEFA Executive Committee, which will undertake the study, will investigate whether a 24-team event could now be introduced at UEFA EURO 2012.

Greater meaning

The Scottish Football Association proposal came with the support of the Football Association of Ireland, Latvian Football Federation and Swedish Football Association. It argued that expanding the EURO would give greater meaning to the qualifying round. In addition, a 24-team tournament would be more attractive to sponsors and television companies as well as spreading the distribution of revenues among a greater number of countries.

Montenegro voted in

The Football Association of Montenegro (MNE), meanwhile, was awarded full membership of UEFA following a vote by the member associations. However, the Football Association of Gibraltar's (GFA) bid for membership was rejected. Both the MNE and GFA had been granted provisional membership by the UEFA Executive Committee last year, pending the decision of the congress.

Statutes amended

The congress approved a series of amendments of UEFA's statutes, including a reinforcement of UEFA's objectives; a definition of fair play; stipulations dealing with UEFA's relationship with European football's stakeholders; and a more comprehensive definition of associations rights and duties. It also approved UEFA's financial report for 2005-06 and budget for 2007-08, as well the HatTrick programme for 2008-12 which will make 450m euro available to the member associations.

[BIGGREEKMAV-UK]

This does have its good points and its bad points.

1. The competion as a whole will make great viewing for everyone,

2. Professional players who have a busy season will find this a big strain..

3. Any country to host the competition will make a fortune from tourists

4. Qualification will be made easy for a majority of teams who seem to just fail by the odd point,,

5. The european cup will be nearly as big as the world cup (theoreticaly)

[Evergreen]

I disagree with it. The quality will diminish.

16 is more than enough.

What's the points of 24? they might as well as make it 32 so everyone can play in that instance.

[BlueStriker]

24 is too much, that would be over half of the countries qualifying!

Qualification games are exciting in their own right because each game is so important. Raising it to 24 lowers the importance of each qualification game and allows too many undeserving teams into the final round.

For the amount of time that goes into the qualification process, it should retain a high level of importance by being an exclusive rather than inclusive final round. ;)

[GS1905]

we will have some ugly first round matches should the number of teams increase tp 24.. woeful proposal at best!! :(

[DUDE]

I'm still on the fence about it. Firstly I disagree with the quality diminishing if its made to 24. The smaller teams are improving all the time. Look at Cyprus in this qualifying campaign! :tup: So imagine how much improvement will be made by 2012. However, BlueStriker and BIGGREEKMAV make good points about qualification. It will take the beauty away from it (for the borderline teams). But there will be other borderline teams by then. Teams like Slovakia, Ireland, Belgium, etc, are all very good sides now but there chances of qualifying are pretty low whereas by 2012 they'll be the equivalent to borderline teams now like Norway, Turkey, Ukraine.