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Football is the world's most popular sport for several reasons. Not least among them is the simplicity of the game. Whenever someone tries to complicate it, things do not turn out well.
That is also true for the administrative side of the sport. When it comes to that aspect, UEFA is, of course, a major player, second only to its global counterpart FIFA.
Therefore, the upcoming EURO 2020 tournament is going to be a major event that many people across the continent and far beyond it look forward to. Yet, the way that everything about it is structured, is an unnecessary bureaucratic tangle.
First off, the creation of the UEFA Nations League, which caused a scheduling dilemma, by crowding the international football calendar even further, was completely unnecessary.
It diminished the importance of qualifying by guaranteeing at least a playoff spot to any team that won its Nations League group, no matter how badly their qualifying campaign may have gone.
After that, there were so many permutations and considerations to be looked at when determining who plays whom in the playoffs.
It was so unusual, that it would have been technically possible for any team from Nations League A to lose every game in that tournament and in qualifying too, while still being guaranteed a playoff spot!
It is understandable why UEFA would like to make it possible for countries to qualify, who would otherwise not make it, but that lowers the quality of the tournament.
It is also understandable why UEFA divided EURO 2020 up between so many host countries making it a truly all-European event. But that too complicated things tremendously. It made certain teams have to be drawn into the corresponding groups that they host.
Lastly, basing the pots for the draw solely on qualifying performance was also wrong. That ensured that defending champions Portugal to be drawn into the same group as the two most recent two World Cup winners, Germany and France.
Meanwhile, two semifinalists from the last World Cup meet again in this EURO, ( England and Croatia). Most groups besides those two just mentioned seem rather boring at first glance.
Let us hope that none of this will matter and that EURO 2020 will be the spectacle it deserves to be.
Disclaimer: The views of the author do not necessarily reflect those of Sportskeeda's.
