It wasn’t a tournament that creates many excitement. A final result that nobody would have predicted - Portugal won. For a team that finished the tournament with three draws, third-placed in the group, and with a single win in 90 minutes but ended up lifting the trophy, this was ultimately the biggest embarrassment of the new 24-team format UEFA had introduced in this year’s tournament.
Much like other sport organizations like FIFA and NFL, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the biggest reason for this 24-team format - Money. While sponsors and UEFA are happily collecting the massive revenues generated from this tournament, many must be wondering: Is this 24-team format a great thing for this championships?
For start, this format creates more opportunities for 8 more teams to play in this tournament. Teams like Albania, Wales, and Northern Ireland are benefits of this new format. There are all making their debuts at this year’s tournament. But with more teams playing in Euro 16, more matches are needed to determine the winner. Hence, the introduction of the Round of 16.
With the added round of knockout stages, there are more teams needed to fill out slots in the last sixteen. Hence, there are four third-placed teams who finished highest in points among the six third-placed teams get to move on to the next round. Because of this added opportunity, the new format also gave teams a chance to play for a result they desired to get through to the next round or to get a favorable part of bracket they desired.
For instance, another debutant in this year’s tournament - Slovakia defended for almost the entire game in their last group game against England, knowing that they lacked the quality compared to the English (not being sarcastic here) and with 3 points already in the bag, a draw would secure their qualification into the last 16. Despite the lost to Germany in the next round, by playing for a draw in the match against England, the Slovakian football team earned at least an extra million Euros by just making past the group stage.
The European football season typically starts from August till May. Nine months of continuous football is extremely tiring. With the new added round of matches, players need to play at least an extra 90 minutes of football on route to winning the title. Antoine Griezmann, one of the best player in this year’s tournament was rested for France’s second group game against Albania, a decision that almost backfired the French team the chance to top the group. Griezmann was introduced late in the game and subsequently broke the deadlock by scoring on the 90th minute of the game, giving France the victory.
Although many believe that the decision to drop Griezmann was a tactical reshuffle by manager - Didier Deschamps, it was obvious that part of the reason to not start Griezmann was his involvement with his club Atletico Madrid in the UEFA Champions League Final which just concluded on 28 May, less than two weeks before the start of the tournament. Griezmann has also played more minutes than any strikers at the Euros, an incredible 5,032 minutes before the start of the tournament. The point is by extending the tournament to a 24-team format, players with extremely tiring legs are not producing their best in the tournament. Managers are forced to rest players if necessary (Italy rested most of their first team players in the match against Ireland) is not what fans would want to see spending both money and time watching the game.
And of course, another big story of this year’s tournament aside from the fairy tale run by both Wales and Iceland is none other than the lopsided brackets. Spain, France, Germany, England, and Italy, a combined 11 World titles and 9 European titles were placed in the same half of the brackets. Compared to the other side of the bracket which only featured Portugal, the only winner of a major tournament, the bracket for the tournament was heavily unbalanced. The reason for this lopsided brackets? The 24-team format.
Teams that finished top of the group like Germany, Italy and France, on paper should be rewarded by having a better path to the final. But to accommodate the four third-placed teams, specific match-ups are generated to fit them. With a lot of probability on how the brackets would penned out, the chance of a good match-up happening much earlier than expected is unavoidable. Portugal, the eventual winner perhaps benefited from the new system. Because of Iceland’s last-minute winner against Austria, Portugal were placed on the weaker side of the bracket. Hence, the opportunity to make it all the way to the final. Under the old 16-team format, the chances of getting such an unbalanced bracket is extremely low.
As famous football commentator Ian Darke quite rightly pointed out, this year’s Euro has been a rather tedious tournament. While nobody expect every match in this Euros to be entertaining and exciting, this year’s tournament hardly generates any new interests among non-football fans to get excited with the sport.
UEFA, the organizers of the Euros has no plans of changing this 24-team format in the next tournament which will be held in 2020 in 13 cities across Europe to celebrate the 60th birthday of this championship. If this plan is materialized, it will post yet another challenge for all teams - the need to travel to major cities across Europe, from cities like Saint Petersburg to Bucharest to Bilbao. Players will travel more and log more miles with more tired legs expected.
Clearly, there are no plans to go back to the previous 16-team format that UEFA had been using since 1996. Although the new format give more opportunities to new teams a chance to play at a major tournament, the 24-team format had done nothing to better the game of football and its popularity across the world.
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