Euro 2016: Was 24-team tournament a success?
Euro 2016 was the first in history to host 24 teams, but did the addition of eight teams water down the competition?
On one hand, it was great to see so many nations compete at the tournament. Fans of Iceland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Albania might have never believed they would have made it to a major tournament, but here they all were.
But while this was a great story for smaller nations and their fans, the overall product on our television screens suffered. It’s not just because of weaker teams ‘padding out’ the competition. After all, Wales and Iceland both made it to the final eight, Wales even reached the semi-finals.
The problem lies with the format of these 24 teams. Due to the format, up to three teams make it out of a group. In fact, four of the six groups send three of their four teams into the Round of 16, meaning only eight teams fail to qualify for the knockout stages.
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- Euro 2016: Portugal victory a symbol of strange tournament
What does this mean?
Smaller nations entered games afraid to lose. They set up to avoid defeat as opposed to playing to win. And it worked for many of them, with three points being enough in many cases to qualify in third place. Winners Portugal drew all of three of their group games to finish third. In any other major tournament they would have exited before the knockouts even began.
With 24 teams, the belief was four points would be more than enough, and three might do it. Teams like Albania knew they would get picked apart the moment they attempted to attack heavyweights like France, so their gameplan was instead to sit back and defend in numbers. A draw was fine.
This hurts the quality of games fans get to watch. Each game doesn’t need to be a six-goal thriller, but fans want to see two teams going at each other and trying to win the game.
That’s not even to say each team must be attacking. Italy are built to defend, but their counter-attacking style was a joy to watch, and they played highly entertaining games with Belgium and Spain, and the stalemate with Germany was a fascinating chess match.
Assuming UEFA wants to continue with more teams at the tournament, then the answer might actually be to add more. By adding eight more teams to the tournament, the format could be tweaked to send the top two through from eight groups, which is how the World Cup works.
The downside is an even weaker level of competition would enter the tournament. The difference is that three points wouldn’t send third-placed teams through. You would need to finish in the top two of the group to advance. Of the 32 teams, 16 would advance and 16 would go home after the group stages.
In the Round of 16, group winners would meet runners-up, a simple and fair system. It would prevent a similar situation to the one Italy faced. The Italians comfortably won their group, but due to the luck of the draw were faced to play a runners-up in the Round of 16, when four group winners took on third-placed teams. Germany got to face Slovakia, while Italy were forced to play defending champions Spain.
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The 24-team experiment had its positives, but the overall product struggled. Adding more teams might be the way to go.