Euro 2012 draw - UEFA f**kery

As we weren't in Euro 2008 you may not have noticed that the draw was manipulated in such a way to ensure that, should they qualify from their pools, the hosts (Austria and Switzerland) would continue to play in their own country up to and including the semi-finals.

This manipulation, which will doubtless be repeated for the joint hosts in 2012 creates one, particularly annoying side-effect. In short it means there are (to all intents and purposes) two separate tournaments going on in different countries with the winners of each meeting in the final. It means that, no matter where a team finishes in their pool, they remain in the same half of the draw and the same country, and cannot move from one half to the other as always happens when only one country hosts.

The knock-on effect of that is that a team can face opponents they played in the pool stage again in the semi-final, which is exactly what happened in 08. The semi-finals - Germany v Turkey and Spain v Russia - were repeats of pool games that had already taken place. Very hard on Russia, obvously, who had to play Spain twice to even make the final!

Five games to get to the showpiece with a very good chance of two of them being against the same team? Silly. (And of course... neither Austria nor Switzerland qualified for the latter stages).

Coincidentally, Turkey also suffered this fate in 2002 when the World Cup was co-hosted. They were forced to play Brazil in the pool and the semi-finals.

What's that? You don't care? Well it irritates me (a bit) anyway.

Posted By: norway, Nov 16, 15:40:46