murf wrote:It was quite easy to fix the 'playing no friendlies to avoid rank drop' thing just by simply weighting the maths correctly and not simply dividing by the number of games played irrespective of their weighting. Would have taken me 2 minutes on an excel spreadsheet. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that is a good reason to have a Nations League (that isn't a league any more than the Champions League is).
OK the Nations League wasn't as bad as feared (maybe because England's group stayed interesting) but we'll soon be bored of playing the same teams. I've no real idea how it all interacts with Euro/WC qualification so I guess time will tell on that one but, yep, hopefully it will be more League Cup than Anglo Italian Cup.
There was indeed a weighting, although not by opponent, to friendlies with it only being worth 40% of normal EUFA or FIFA competition games, but it was still worth marks and the no friendlies policy could still be beneficial in manipulating the rankings. Even with a weighting by difficulty of opponent, some countries would still want prestigious friendlies as the only means to measure themselves outside of competition, and therefore take the consequent risk of losing them so this would not have changed, avoiding them altogether would still have been a valid tactic for some.
The Nations League is integral to the qualification group seeding for all major championships including the European qualification section of the World Cup and is played biannually before each major qualifying draw. The performance within the Nations League combined with FIFA ranking determines the pot each team goes in. (The Euros and World Cup are therefore directly affected)
They will not be playing the same teams from edition to edition of the Nations League so i'm not exactly sure where you got that from. Every group of three within each section, and there are four groups within each of four sections A to D, involve relegation of the bottom team for sections A to C, and promotion of the top team of each group for sections B to D. There will be a fresh draw of the CHANGED twelve teams within each section before every edition of the Nations League.
As for how this competition might develop after such a successful start...
The World Cup has been around since the 1930s when Uruguay won a fledgling competition in South America, with only a very limited number of teams, travel was by Liner or ship from Europe and not as easy as today, taking a relatively long time. It has since had over 80 years of development (if not adjusting for the break for WWII).
The Euros started off in the 60s? With two legged semis and a final right up to late last century, the 80s I think, the Nations League is starting in a very similar fashion.
It will undoubtedly grow in importance as all competitions do with time, even as the full implications of success and failure become more apparent and understood by the general public. It's not comparable to any major competition right now, but that certainly doesn't mean that will always be the case.
It's by nature and format a European competition not a World one but imo is absolutely certain to grow in importance, it's format may well lead to increased popularity as time goes on as it doesn't involve so many mismatches as other tournaments' interminable qualifiers do, but instead matches the relative abilities of participating teams, the promotion and relegation provide a regular and constant changing of the guard.
The highest section atm provides the four teams to contest the trophy, but in time this could be expanded to eight or more with a finals competition of its own, it may not always have strictly the present format.
As the formats and number of participants in the more established trophies increase in length and size, an optimum size threshold may well be exceeded. With an increased number of participants and lengthier finals comes a danger of a dilution of quality, less can sometimes be more in football or any entertainment business and make for a better finals. The Nations League may well one day supersede, at least in popularity, it's more illustrious and established European predecessor, who knows.