A little over 20 years ago, the British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles became the first man to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, 358 years after it was conjectured. He won many prizes for this.
We will need Sir Andrew to do a bit of work once again, this time on a mathematical problem which is a little more mysterious and puzzling. In September this year England and the other home countries will take part in something Uefa has dreamt up called the Nations League.
I have been studying the plans for the past 48 hours and my eyes are bleeding. I still can’t work out the really important bit — how the Nations League relates to qualification for the European Championship and, perhaps later, the World Cup.
The whole thing was invented about six years ago. The plan was to replace those rather otiose international friendly games which bore us rigid every year and for which some of the top international players suddenly go missing, at the behest of their clubs. Further, Uefa also wished to make it slightly easier for the really useless European sides to qualify for major tournaments. I am not sure why they want to do this.
And so, the first stage is straightforward enough. All 55 of Europe’s teams, including Gibraltar and Kosovo, will be seeded into four groups, where they will then be seeded again. England are in the top tier, Group A, and seeded in the second-ranked tranche of sides within that group. Wales and Northern Ireland are in Group B and Scotland, bless them, are in Group C along with the likes of Estonia, Israel and Montenegro.
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Each group is then split into sections of three or four teams who will play each other home and away during the course of the 2018-19 season. There are then semi-finals and a final. The winners of Group A get to be Nations League champions — yowza! The winners of the other groups get promoted to the next league up.
The worst performing teams from each league, except Group D, get relegated. I am not sure quite how they will work this out, given that the sides will compete only against two or three other members of their group.
On the face of it, though, this is quite an enticing prospect. Instead of those wearying and meaningless friendlies, England will find themselves in a tournament up against the likes of Germany, Italy, France and so on.
Meanwhile, the Scots — for the first time in living memory — have a chance of actually winning something, and possibly qualifying for the European Championship via a back-door route. That is, if anyone understands what that back-door route actually is. It is so byzantine as to defy explanation.
Here’s what Uefa says. In addition to the Nations League finals, “Each group winner takes a spot in the semi-finals. If the group winner is already one of 20 qualified teams, rankings will be used to give the playoff spot to another team of the league.
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“If less than four teams in the entire league remain unqualified, playoff spots for that league are given to teams of the next-lower league. This determines the four remaining qualifying spots for the European Championship (out of 24 total).”
Nope, don’t get it. I rang Sir Andrew for help, but he wasn’t in. I understand that four places in the European Championship will now be set aside for teams from the Nations League, while the rest are decided in the usual manner of qualifying groups, and that these four places are denied to the top teams (unless they have failed to qualify).
But the process as to who actually goes through is a mystery — and will of course remain a mystery to all the sides involved, because they will at the same time be attempting to qualify for the Euros via the traditional route. Nor do I understand why Uefa will be using rankings as a means of deciding potential qualifiers when they are somehow able to use Nations League results to determine which countries are relegated each year.
Either way, the end of 2018-19 will surely be both fraught and shrouded in fog — as countries will have to wait for the outcome of two simultaneous competitions, and then some Uefa rankings jiggery-pokery, to see who goes through. Perhaps it will all become clear in the end.
There is also a fear that some countries might look at this format and think to themselves: ahh, so if we get relegated, and end up in a weaker group alongside the Faroes and the Vatican City, we stand a much better chance of qualifying for the European Championship via the back door.
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There has also been more general criticism around Uefa’s intention to give a helping hand to really useless teams. Shouldn’t Europe’s best be contesting the championship? Isn’t that kind of the point of a championship?
So, a kind of cup/league hybrid to keep us all entertained once we have returned from Moscow with the World Cup in our grasp. They are full of ideas, these football administrators. You have to say that.
