Europe’s Nations League final takes place in Italy this evening and it could be a rather tasty affair with Spain taking on France for the crown.
Although this fledgling competition is still finding its feet on the international stage, its four-team climax – with semis, a third and fourth place match and the final itself – is proving to be exciting and competitive.
Last Wednesday’s first semi between Italy and Spain – which brought to an end the former’s world record 37-match unbeaten streak – was worthy of a last four game in any competition, while the second semi, which saw France come back from 2-0 down to beat Belgium 3-2, was an absolute classic.
What’s good to see is that the players and managers are taking this competition seriously. And the fans are feeding off that enthusiasm and warming to the whole thing.
The premise for the Nations League was smart – get rid of meaningless friendlies and replace them with some sort of proper contest. And for the most part that has worked.
However, while the finale to this competition is great, I am still not overly enamoured with the process needed to reach that point – the complicated series of mini groups and divisions that requires time, patience, a protractor and differently sized pieces of string to work out.
Okay, I exaggerate. But I am pretty sure with some minor tweaks it could be more interesting and easier to grasp.
A little simplifying and refining and this could be a real winner of a competition
For example, wouldn’t it be easier to have a basic, bog standard league system? Five or six divisions playing home and away games with all of Europe’s countries aspiring to fight their way to the top division to spend some time with the big boys?
You could still have the ‘final event’ under this plan – with maybe the top few teams in the highest division joined by the winners of the other divisions in a quarter-final onwards style tournament.
But more importantly, for all the other nations there would be a simple relegation and promotion system to enjoy – top three up, bottom three down.
This would also solve one of the other issues the current system creates – it is very hard for anyone other than the major countries to ever think about winning it.
Last time the end game was played out between England, Portugal, Holland and Switzerland. This time it was Belgium, France, Spain and Italy. Next time it will probably be a mixture of those eight with maybe Germany and Denmark thrown in. But it’s hard to see anyone outside that group ever making it to the fun part.
If football is trying to level up and create more opportunities for smaller countries to be play significant games, then the Nations League is the perfect place for that to happen.
A little simplifying and refining and this could be a real winner of a competition.
Told you so
It’s not very often I get to say ‘I told you so’ but when it comes to Watford being the first team to sack their manager this season, well, I told you so.
It was right there in black and white in my preseason Premier League predictions: “...I expect Munoz to be the first managerial casualty of the season. Maybe by Christmas, maybe after just a handful of games, maybe at half time in their opening match…”
Then again, having said that, with their appalling record of firing managers, it wasn’t exactly the hardest call to make. A bit like predicting a Kim Jong-un election victory…
Watford have replaced their boss of eight months with Claudio Ranieri in a move which is fascinating and surprising, but which feels destined to end in failure. It would appear the lovable Italian is still dining out on that freaky Leicester City title triumph more than half a decade later. He isn’t a bad coach, don’t get me wrong. But neither, in my opinion, is he a very good one.
Give him money to spend and quality players like he had at Chelsea and he will put together a decent team. But give him a limited budget and mediocre players and he is not going to give you much more than the sum of their parts.
Watford’s squad very much falls under the category of mediocre. In fact, I thought Munoz had actually done rather well to take seven points from their first seven games – the sort of return that would have possible kept them up come the end of the season.
But, as usual for a club that has had 17 managerial appointments in the last decade, the club’s owners have delusions of grandeur and think they know best. So they’ve turned to Ranieri in what I can only assume is expectation of another miracle.
Otherwise what’s the point? He isn’t young, he isn’t one for the future and he isn’t going to cheap.
Let me leave you with another prediction – before the end of the season I will be writing about how Ranieri has been dismissed…
Your say
“I like most of what you write but I found your analysis of the Joshua vs Usyk fight to be rather puerile. Joshua’s problem is not that he has got side-tracked with fame and sponsorships, but that he is not as good as Usyk, and probably never was.
“As an all-round athlete, Usyk wins hands down. He is incredibly quick on his feet, moving and dodging constantly, exhausting his opponents. Joshua is, by contrast, heavy, stiff and slow. Case in point is Joshua’s upset loss against the overweight and unfit (albeit very strong) Andy Ruiz Jr in 2019. That would have never happened to Usyk because he, to use Muhammad Ali terminology, would have “floated like a butterfly” around the nearly immobile hulk.
“Added to his unparalleled fitness is Usyk’s left-handedness. Naturally, boxers spend most of their time fighting right-handed pugilists, so being able to hit hard from the left always discombobulates them.
“If I were a gambling man, I would put a big sum on Usyk winning the rematch. He’s one of the greatest of our times, of all times, even, no matter how apologetic British-centric media get for Joshua.” Patrick Zammit, e-mail.
Well that’s told me, Patrick. You may very well be right. But I still see a bit of Rocky in AJ’s story. Maybe it’s the shorts…
Twitter: @maltablade