Is increasing the number of teams at Euro 2016 a good thing?

UEFA have increased the number of nations at the European Championships to 24 for Euro 2016 in France

The European Championships hosted by France in 2016 will contain the most teams ever seen at a finals tournament, with UEFA deciding to increase the number of teams that qualify to 24 from the usual 16.

The qualification games for the tournament continue this week.

The way that the qualification process works means that most of the bigger European footballing countries should be at finals in 2016.

Qualification

France will qualify automatically as the host nation and have already been installed as second favourites to win the tournament at odds of 9/2 behind world champions Germany.

The top two from the eight groups qualify for the finals tournament, as do the third-placed team with the highest point’s total. The other third-placed teams will then head into the usual two-legged play-offs to see who will take part in France.

Standard

The extra teams means that the quality of the tournament may be diluted slightly, because it is no longer just the best 16 teams in Europe, but the best 24, which will appeal to the sponsors and some of the smaller nations.

Chance

This does give smaller nations more of a chance to make it the finals and it may provide extra motivation for countries that perennially struggle to qualify for the major tournaments. British countries like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are cases in point really.

All three have some talented players, but they never seem to have enough quality to qualify for the major tournaments. At one point Scotland were regulars at major tournaments. However in recent years they have struggled to make a mark on the international scene.

At the moment though under Gordon Strachan the Scots are playing some decent football and getting some very creditable results. The qualification process will work in some countries favour and Scotland could be one of them.

Wanted

As I mentioned at the beginning, I believe that UEFA have worked the qualification process so that they have all the bigger football nations in France for the 2016 finals. Whether they have decided to change the number of teams for football or other reasons is unknown to me anyway.

However for fans I suppose it gives them more games to enjoy and the European Championships final tournament will now have closer to the number of nations that take part in the World Cup.

There is one a downside to the expansion in that bigger teams may get slightly complacent in qualifying, as they virtually guaranteed a place in the finals, barring any major shocks that is.

Commercial

The cynical side of me is thinking that the expansion was taken for commercial reasons by UEFA. All the big European countries and their football players have a huge attractive to sponsors, which will mean big money for everybody involved.

Footballers are used to advertise products that make companies a lot of money each year and UEFA will obviously benefit from any big money deals.

Football

This summer Sweden missed out on the World Cup, so talented, but mercurial PSG striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic missed out on the finals and arguably one of the most talented players of his generation missed out on the big event.

UEFA do not want that sort of situation to occur with their major showpiece in just two years’ time and have found a way to get as many of the continents top players in the tournaments finals in France as possible.

That is not a terrible thing as everybody wants to see the best players that Europe has to offer at the finals, no matter what the reason behind the expansion of the finals may be.

Is increasing the number of teams at Euro 2016 a good thing?