The death of the European Championships as we know it and the fat man responsible

Football has changed very little over the past few decades. A few rules have been modified, with keepers no longer able to pick-up back-passes and tendencies for three centre-backs and mullets have been consigned to the annals of history.

Styles of football, players approach to the game and wages have all been altered, but the format in which the game is played has changed little in this time.

However, by the time the next European Championships in 2016 kick-off in France, UEFA will have transformed the continent’s biggest international tournament by increasing the amount of entrants from 16 to 24.

This is this biggest change to the tournament since the competition doubled its numbers ahead of Euro ’92 in Sweden.

On the face of it this is an exciting prospect for any football fan, giving supporters more football betting opportunities and the chance to see 51 games (52 if a third place play-off is played) instead of the 31 this time around.

But, this threatens to be at the expense of the competition’s status as an elite tournament, with nearly half of the continents 52 nations qualifying for a place in France.

And added to this is the simple logistics of squeezing 24 teams into a coherent knockout system, as two teams qualifying from each group would leave an awkward 12 teams – four shy of a round-of-16 and also too many for a quarter-final.

One suggestion has been to have four groups of six teams, as this makes mathematical sense, although from a viewer’s perspective it could give the group stages a similar feel to the two years of qualifying that preceded it.

This all adds up to a sharp increase in the revenue generated from television rights and gates at the stadiums, plus greater advertising opportunities available to those with the cash to splash, handing a greater percentage of dosh to UEFA, who increasingly resemble the gorging man in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

And the reason for the change reveals itself.

But no one at UEFA particularly knows how it will all fit together to form something that resembles a tournament, not even Gianni Infantino, UEFA’s general secretary, who admits the situation is “not ideal”.

“It is 24 teams and that is a problem - it is not an ideal final tournament because you will have to have a few of the third ones who qualify as well [for the knockout stage].

“The question is how you make it in a way that results cannot be organised and you don’t know in advance what you need to be the best.”

Infantino also said UEFA would also look at the qualification process for the tournament to ensure that it was not “boring”.

And despite seemingly already having concerns about the integrity of it all, they are ploughing on regardless.

This will of course means that neutral fans will more than likely be denied the delights of groups crammed full of closely seeded teams.

Teams will be spread more evenly across the two extra groups and gone will be the group to include the two eventual finalists, or four teams from the top 10 of FIFA’s world rankings, as Group B this time around featured Germany (3), Netherlands (4), Denmark (9), and Portugal (10).

There’ll be too much space for teams to be squashed into a group of death and in its place will be a handful more games of potential dearth.

Players of note born to countries which aren’t recognised football powers will be given the opportunity to shine, with Gareth Bale and Wales potential benefactors of the change, but whether this will be enough to mask the dilution of the tournament only time will tell.

Tags: England, France, UEFA Euro 2012