If Euro 2020 had only 16 finalists...

[Duncan Gardner]

As prompted by Satchmo when analysing the likely poor overall quality (see Nations League thread)

Qualify as Group Winners

Belgium, Italy, England, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, France, Poland, Switzerland, Croatia

Qualify as 2 Best Runners-up

Netherlands, Russia

Other Runners-up to Play-off

Portugal, Turkey, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Czechia, Wales, Finland

Seeding Pools for Main Draw

A- be, it, en, de
B- es, ua, fr, pl
C- Ch, hr, nl, Ru
D- 4 play off winners

Organised by Countries Embracing Real Football Associations Considering Temporarily Unique Arrangements (COUNTERFACTUA).

Trophy (a pair of solid gold oversize gonads) to be presented by guest of honour TA Berbaslug, in memory of his late Granny

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Why 16? The best Euros were Euro 80 to 92 that made do with 8. Euro 96 was a completely turgid affair, enlivened only by one and a half decent games from England, and a cheeky goal by Karel Poborsky.

Euro 84, that British television hardly deigned to show as none of the home nations qualified, was one of the best international tournaments of all time.

[Duncan Gardner]

16 draws a balance between over-elitism (8 or 12 teams) and bloated lack of quality (24 or 32)

Ps agreed about Euro 84 though- watching it in Germany was fun

[1974ddr]

'Bloated lack of quality'. Beautifully put. The World Cup hasn't been the same since abandoning the 16 team format in 1982.

[Sean of the Shed]

If there are play-offs for the last four they would almost certainly be seeded, with the highest ranked teams being Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Wales.

[Sean of the Shed]

I'm not buying the rose tinted nostalgia for tournaments of old with minimal amounts of teams. I don't recall them being so much better than more recent ones. The last World Cup was as entertaining as any I can recall.
Also the increase in entries has made the World Cup far more accessible to teams outside of Europe and South America, and in the case of UEFA there are far more teams fighting for places since the collapse of Yugoslavia and the USSR and paring 53 teams down to 8 seems really harsh.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

It's 55 now, but realistically only around 48 of those are ever going to be better than cannon fodder in qualifying, even in Nations League D. Some UEFA members have smaller populations than Chorley. So a 12 team finals would have the same "4 to 1" distillation of quality that the old 8 team finals used to (when UEFA had 32 members).

[1974ddr]

More accessible doesn't equate to better quality though. Did (picking a handful at random) Kuwait, Togo, El Salvador, Canada or China really add anything when they qualified?

[elguapo4]

I'm sure the football fans in those countries enjoyed it, and there's plenty of regular qualifiers e.g Germany 2000,England 2006 or Ireland 2012 who added nothing as well.

[Diable Rouge]

'Bloated lack of quality'. Beautifully put. The World Cup hasn't been the same since abandoning the 16 team format in 1982.

USA 94 and France 98 were objectively decent tournaments, I'd have thought?

[Sean of the Shed]

Also there are as many African, Asian and Central American teams that have contributed to tournaments who likely wouldn't have qualified for a 16 team tournament.
If you want a competition that the same few behemoths participate in time after time then I'm sure the European Superleague will be along sometime soon to satisfy your desire.

[Duncan Gardner]

Also the increase in entries has made the World Cup far more accessible to teams outside of Europe and South America

The World Cup is fully accessible to Euro plankton like San Marino or Andorra. They get 10 goes in every competition to embarrass the big boys (and only last week the Pyreneean pretenders held England U-21 to a 3-3 draw)

That access is there regardless of how many middle-rankers get to limp in via 3rd place play offs. In other continents, there's no inherent reason why African krill can't have those 8 or 10 qualifiers per tournament

[Duncan Gardner]

Back in the arguably real World, there will be a debutant next year, as Georgia and Macedonia contest the League D play off. Although the Macedonians managed a respectable 3rd place in qualifying Along with Georgia, Hungary have a chance to sneak in from 4th

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Weren't four or five of the 1982 USSR team Georgian, back when Dinamo Tblisi were one of the best club sides in Europe?

[Duncan Gardner]

Aye- Borracho formerly of this parish was regularly enthusing about them