Is Platini mad? Or just becoming Blatter?

[Kitsondinho]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18657633

[PieEater]

Sounds to me like desperation that they may not get countries bidding to host it as it costs so much to host.

[Terminal Boardom]

The cheap air travel comment is laughable. May be cheap for the respective FAs to sort out flights some 6 months in advance but day trippers have been fleeced with having to pay around £800 for flights to Ukraine.

[larry1971]

The cheap air travel comment is laughable. May be cheap for the respective FAs to sort out flights some 6 months in advance but day trippers have been fleeced with having to pay around £800 for flights to Ukraine.

and of course Platini, and the other muppets who run Uefa will be using cheap airline travell and using cheap hotels to stay in increasing the tournament to 24 teams is bad enough but to suggest it being played across the continent is crazy . If they want to do that then why not get rid of the 2 years of quallifying and just make it a straight knockout compertition.

[placenameroyal]

Platini Does Not Like Turkey

[placenameroyal]

Platini Does Not Like Turkey

[placenameroyal]

Platini Does Not Like Turkey

[From Despair To Where?]

The problem with the Euros is that to avoid rotating the competition around the same 5 countries, you need co hosts and that is far from ideal. However, Platini's been on the Blatter pills with this one

[Super_horns]

He wants to go to all the big cities again...and not Turkey or Wales/Scotland.

[From Despair To Where?]

That's kind of what I mean. With talk of the tournament expanding to 32 teams (nonsense, in my opinion. Qualification, 8 groups of 7, top 3 go through, 4th and 5th p but few with lace go into playoff??????), realistically, the only countries capable of hosting it on their own would be England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. UEFA can't do that because they would be open to complaints of favouritism from the other 50 odd members.

The alternative? Lets hawk the tournament round the 16 cities with the most money to bid for batch of games, so you get an over inflated competition of severely diluted quality with Athens and Tirana hosting a group consisting of Germany, Ireland, Iceland and Moldova whilst Greeece are playing 2 games in Porto and one in Marseille. UEFA have a unique predicament. Lots of memebers of a relatively high standard but few with the infrastrucure to host a tournament.


I don't know what the answer is. Well, I do, it's to revert partially to the old format. Have the usual qualifying groups over the course of 15 months as per now. Then have an unseeded draw for last 16, home and away, unseeded draw for quarter finals home and away then have single legged semis and a final in 1 desigated city over the course of 1 week. Bonkers? Of course but no more so than any other suggestion and it seems to work ok for the Champions League.

[Fluff]

In reply to the OP, mad as a box of frogs.

no pun intended.

[TheLawnMowerMan]

In reply to the OP, mad as a box of frogs.

Pun intended.

+1

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Sounds to me like desperation that they may not get countries bidding to host it as it costs so much to host.

the only bidders currently are...

Turkey
Scotland/Wales/Ireland
Azerbaijan/Georgia


You can sort of see why he's considering a Plan B

[Barry the bird boggler]

Before 1980 I don't believe any country hosted it and they just had "qualifying groups" that led to QFs and SFs being played at random locations. Seems to be what they should return to seeing as we have about 50 odd countries in Europe and they don't appear to want to exclude anyone from the Finals.

[Mr Angry]

They are going the wrong way; there are a couple of ways they can progress things imho.

They chould have a larger qualifying tournament ending up with 8 teams, say 8 groups of 8 teams in a group, making 14 internationals spread across 18 months/2 years.

If you needed smaller Groups, then have a pre-qulifying tournament based on FIFA rankings to produce 8 "minnows" to go into the 8 groups.

The last 8 then meet in a tournament at 4 stadia in 2 groups of 4, over 2 weeks, with the 3 group games in the first week. In the 2nd week, the top 2 in each group play each other in the semi's, with the winners meeting in the final.

All done and dusted in a couple of weeks, thus ensuring the players have a break before the start of the new season, and all simply capable of being met in a reasonably small geographical location to save costs for fans and travelling time for the teams (In England for example, you could use the Emirates and Wembley for one Group, and then Old Trafford and The Etihad for the other; or Wembley, Villa Park, OT and St James') Any single country should have 4 decent stadia in it....

[Wimb]

surprised Germany haven't stuck in a cheeky bid, know they hosted the World Cup in 2006 but didn't stop France winning Euro 2016.

If Wales/Scot/Ireland don't win this round, you'd think England would have a decent shot at 2024.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Before 1980 I don't believe any country hosted it and they just had "qualifying groups" that led to QFs and SFs being played at random locations. Seems to be what they should return to seeing as we have about 50 odd countries in Europe and they don't appear to want to exclude anyone from the Finals.

I think they sort of realised that having a finals tournament that was just 3 games was a bit shit.