Euro 2008 seeding format - total farce

[andyinswinton]

Japan and South Korea were both seeded at the 2002 World Cup and Belgium and Holland were seeded at Euro 2000.

Seeding is nothing new for host countries.

I agree that it can always make a group of death and a weaker group but there is nothing that can be done about it really. The FIFA seedings are a joke as they are.

[Craig_H]

Never said it was anything new, just a shambles. Especially with 2 host nations.

[bigfooty]

Greece should be seeded as holders but Austria and Switzerland are crap and should not be seeded.

Austria would not even qualify were they not hosting it, Switzerland would be lucky to finish 2nd in a group. To go from that to being first seeds is stupid.

[fah-q]

Haven't they changed the rules now so that for the world cup only the hosts have automatic qualification?

[andyinswinton]

Haven't they changed the rules now so that for the world cup only the hosts have automatic qualification?

Yep. It was changed after 2002 so Brazil had to qualify for the 2006 tournament I think.

[Neil Young]

Greece are defending champions, or course they should be seeded first, in fact they shouldn't have had to qualify IMO. They should've been in automatically. Hate that rule change. If you win it you earn the right to defend it.

Well, they do have the right to defend it. The European Champions get into the European Championships automatically, They just no longer make it straight through to the Finals.

If you allow for the fact that the European Championships include the qualifying stages, then you've got to draw the line somewhere or else you might as well argue that the winners of the last tournament should, like they do in the Americas Cup, go straight into the final.

Besides, it arguably helps the winners to some extent since at least they don't go two years without any competitive matches.

Anyway I think DJS should be allowed to determine the seedings for all football tournaments since he gets so f*cking hot under the collar about it all.

[dom9]

Austria and Switzerland are going to be seeded as hosts. Greece are going to be seeded as holders. And the fourth seed will be the side who has the best combined qualifying record from the World Cup 2006 qualification campaign, and the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

Off the top of my head, i'd guess at Czech Republic - they always have brilliant qualification campaigns.

So the four 'seeds' will probably be Austria, Switzerland, Greece and the Czech Republic.

So you could conceivably end up with a group like this: Austria, Germany, Italy, France.

While another group could be: Greece, Poland, Croatia, Romania.

So with 2 qualifying for the quarter finals from each group, you could end up with 2 inferior nations getting through, while genuine contenders go out in the group stage.

What's the point of having a 'seeding' system if you seed the weaker sides?

Are you implying that Croatia are an 'inferior' team?

[kurtangle01]

I'm sitting on the fence here because I can see the advantages in both the points made. Perhaps the best way to do it in future would be to have the group winners as the seeded teams?

[andyinswinton]

I'm sitting on the fence here because I can see the advantages in both the points made. Perhaps the best way to do it in future would be to have the group winners as the seeded teams?

There are only four groups in the championships and more than four qualifying groups so it just wouldn't work.

[-V-]

How about Italy. They're the WORLD champions. And they won it more recently.

How about that then?

LOL. DJS you know fine well this is the EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS. And the deserved champions of europe are????

The FIFA world cup is a totally seperate tournament

[disco]

This thread is much ado about nothing.

Even if you found a way of seeding the top FIFA ranking teams etc., you'll still end up with 'groups of death'

[The Glove]

Do away with seeding and put everyone who qualifies into a pot and draw them out like the FA Cup. **** group games off. Lose one and youre out. That'd make it worth watching.

[El Diego]

What's 1996 seedings got to do with this?

And who says i was campaigning for england to be seeded in 1996 anyway?

They got to the semi finals mind. And had a tough group too, with Holland in it. Unless of course you're going to say it was a weak group...in which case, you'd be calling scotland ****e.

As for the european big boys having no problem qualifying - how does that work if 3 of them end up in the same group?

No your saying that Greece shouldn't be seeded even though they won the last one. You were mentioning they didn't even make it to the world cup, and I was just saying England were probably seeded in 96 and they didn't make it to US 94 so would you be pissed off if England were seeded in 96?

[El Diego]

I meant weren't seeded.

[El Diego]

At the end of the day the hosts are seeded to try and keep them in the tourno as long as possible so FIFA/UEFA make more money out of it, I mean Switzerland and Austria are not the hot beds of football are they? They are trying to get more people intrested in the sport. Remember when England had the womans Euro championship? We got good media coverage of it until England went out of it. They are just trying to do the same over there. Also anyone who thinks that the previous winner doesn't deserve to be seeded needs to think about it a bit more carefully.