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#1 It offers qualification to a minnow
UEFA in a bid to make the competition more attractive across board introduced a format whereby countries can seek qualification for EURO 2020 through this route.
The scenario sees all four league winners offered direct qualification for the next EURO, while the remaining 20 slots would be gotten through the regular EURO qualifiers which are slated to start next year.
As most of the major nations in League A and to a lesser extent League B are all but guaranteed to qualify through the direct qualifiers, this is undoubtedly an incentive for the smaller teams in Leagues C and D, who now have a lifeline to qualify for a major tournament, batting which they might not have made it.
To put this in context, countries on League D such as Gibraltar, Malta, Andorra and Luxembourg now have a genuine chance of being at the EURO in two years, and with all due respect to them, a tournament such as that is a step too far for their ilk.
The difference in class between countries in the top spectre of European football (League A) and the bottom cadre (League D) is so vast that qualification matches between them are more an opportunity for players of the aforementioned to stat-pad than it is a competitive fixture, with scorelines resembling can cricket innings than football results.
Bigger nations usually breeze through qualifiers, as the smaller nations do not offer enough resistance to make them break a sweat, and fans usually look forward to the main tournaments for major competition between football heavyweights to provide genuine blockbusters.
The sheer number of football minnows present on Europe reduces interest in the continent's qualifiers, as there is already a prejudice of it being too easy compared to other confederations, and UEFA is doing itself no favours by undermining the strength of its major competition by offering a qualification to its weakest teams.
EURO 2020 is guaranteed to have at least one group containing a walkover team or two (depending on who represents League C) and as much as everyone loves a fairytale qualification story, just like Panama at the last World Cup who got walloped by Belgium and England, it reduces the overall competition of the tournament.
