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The Euros has always been a fairly tidy tournament. There was a time when only four teams participated. 16 teams have qualified to the finals since 1996, which has kept the powerhouses strong and the format neat and clean. The top two finishers in each group go through, just like in the World Cup. No muss, no fuss.
UEFA voted to expand the tournament to 24 teams back in 2008, a format which went into effect this summer. 45 percent of UEFA’s member nations qualified for the finals, compared with only 30 percent under the 16-team format. The pundit class feared a dip in quality, with minnows like Hungary, Iceland and Wales bringing the overall quality of the tournament down to an unacceptable level. Would teams like these merely park the bus, earning three draws in the hope of earning a third-placed berth to the round of 16? Clutch thy pearls, analysts, and get thee to the fainting couch!
How silly the intelligentsia can be sometimes. Barring the occasionally dull, grubby match (cf. Croatia-Portugal), this tournament has offered some incredible thrills, shaped some inspiring underdog narratives, and will serve to spur national development in a great many countries across the continent. Here’s why the 24-team format has actually been a rousing success.
1) It’s worked before
Most of those wringing their hands about the 24-team format seem to forget that we’ve been down this road a few times in various tournaments. The men’s World Cup consisted of 24 teams from 1982 through 1994, and given how misty-eyed people get when you mention the names Zico, Sócrates, Lineker, Maradona, and Romario, it would be hard to classify those tournaments as boring or lacking in exciting football. The 1982 World Cup actually featured the highest goals-per-game rate (2.81) since the 1970 tournament, which, y’know, featured what is probably the greatest national team in history (Brazil).
It’s not just the men’s side that found success with the 24-team format, either. The women’s World Cup last year saw the emergence of the likes of Costa Rica, Cameroon, and England as serious contenders on the women’s world stage. Great players like Vero Boquete and Vivianne Miedema got to play on the biggest stage for women’s soccer when a 16-team tournament would have likely excluded Spain and the Netherlands.
The Copa América Centenario expanded to 16 teams thanks to the joint efforts of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, and while only one CONCACAF team made it to the semifinals, entertaining sides like Peru and Venezuela got to test their mettle against the CONMEBOL giants. Throughout the group stage, Paraguay, Panama and Costa Rica produced exciting moments. More teams doesn’t automatically mean less fun.
2) Tournament expansion spurs national development
If you have no hope of qualifying for a national tournament, why bother investing in your youth development program? There’s only so much money you can spend before you begin to feel that your efforts are wasted when those players get to the senior level and never move on to big European clubs or get to participate in the Euros or World Cup. If you think you have a chance to get your senior team to the biggest stages, however, then you will begin to put more money into better coaching better facilities and equipment, and ultimately, developing better players.
Iceland is probably the quintessential example of this. They began pumping tons of money into indoor fields, UEFA-licensed coaches, and year-round training and play for their youth players. Lo and behold, they were within a hair’s breadth of qualifying for Brazil two years ago, losing a two-legged playoff to Croatia. Then, they barnstormed their way through Euro qualifying, claiming the Netherlands, Turkey, Czech Republic, Austria, and England as scalps on their way to a quarterfinals berth. None of this would have happened had the Euros remained a 16-team tournament, or if the World Cup hadn’t expanded to 32 teams. Those expansions became incentives to grow the game in Iceland.
We have of course seen this repeatedly over the years, as nations like Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Japan, South Korea and Algeria have begun to produce quality footballers who eventually make their way to the top five leagues in Europe. There are, of course, a great many social and historical causes for national federations to begin investing in their national programs, but the promise of major tournament qualifications thanks to expanded formats is certainly a big one.
3) More teams = more fun
Are you really that bummed that Wales and Hungary won their groups? How about Iceland thoroughly outclassing England in the round of 16? Did anyone see Austria getting smoked by some "minnows?" I don’t know about you, but I had a blast watching Northern Ireland ride their defensive steel all the way to the knockout stage. In fact, the most boring games have been from "established" sides like the Croatia-Portugal slugfest.
The band of tactical variation is pretty narrow at the top of the football pyramid, which makes sense. Everyone knows everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses, and then they go about cancelling each other out. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Atlético Madrid-esque defensive cohesion was unique to them, while Wales’s robust free-flowing midfield counterattacks provided by Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey haven’t had an equal. Iceland has evolved from an ultra-compact defensive side that faced Portugal in the first group stage game, to a buccaneering possession side that knows how to use a long throw-in to its advantage.
The fact that Wales and Iceland are even in the quarterfinals is a delight in itself. Guess what: Both teams have a chance to make it to the semifinals. Wales are in form, and drew Belgium 0-0 and beat them 1-0 in qualifying. Given the tactical frustrations Marc Wilmots’ side has shown at times, Belgium is there for the taking. As for Iceland, they won’t back down against the superior quality of France’s players. That is going to be a game, friends. More quarterfinal fixtures like Germany-Italy might produce a better game on paper, but tournament football is as much about thrilling narrative as it is about zero-sum tactical battles.
4) These new teams are actually good, period.
There is this prevailing belief that no matter the entertainment value, the narrative hook, or the upset results, the lesser teams are actually not that good, especially compared with the top sides in the world. It’s true that the best of the best are heads and shoulders above everyone else, but the spread of talent actually narrows rapidly once you go further down the rankings.
To show this, we’ll look at the international Elo rankings. Elo is a system that awards and deducts points from a national team based on the underlying talent of its players, the strength of its opponents, the competitiveness of the match (friendly vs. qualifier vs. tournament game), and the results from said match. It’s a much more transparent, precise, and, frankly, accurate ranking system than what FIFA trots out.
From first-ranked Argentina through 32nd-ranked Ukraine, we have a 384-point spread. That’s a lot. Argentina would be heavily favored if they faced Ukraine in a competitive game. Now, if we look at tied-for-33rd-ranked Sweden and Serbia through tied-for-63rd-ranked New Zealand and Belarus, the point spread shrinks to only 151 points. The participating teams in the Euros from this middle tier include Sweden, Hungary, Austria, Iceland, Russia, Northern Ireland, and Albania. Only Sweden and Russia had truly bad tournaments. Austria was assumed to be of a higher caliber, but actually got beaten by Iceland and Hungary in the group stage—two teams who were closer in true talent than most would have assumed. In all, three of those seven mid-tier teams advanced to the knockout stages, and one of them is in the quarterfinals.
You can’t look back at the last 19 days and say the Euros haven’t been successful. Yeah, Sweden were lame, and Croatia-Portugal was excruciating to watch. The thing is, though, that every tournament has these types of crappy moments. Whether you have 16 teams, 24 teams, 32 teams, or even 40 teams, as new FIFA president Gianni Infantino is suggesting for future World Cups, there will be highs and lows. It’s pretty impossible to have a repeat of Italia ’90 anymore. More and more countries are being given the opportunity to earn the international spotlight, and as such, more players will be properly developed. More games will be weird and fun. Frankly, a 40-team World Cup would be pretty cool.
New things are always difficult to adjust to. Give yourself time, and you’ll forget that Zico and Maradona played in an "inferior" format. You’ll only remember their magic.
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