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The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

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    #26
    The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

    Reed, this may be useful on how the draw was done:

    The pot allocations were based on the UEFA national team coefficient rankings of the sixteen finalists at the end of the qualifying competition in November 2011.Each nation's coefficient was generated by calculating:

    40% of the average ranking points per game earned in the UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying stage.

    40% of the average ranking points per game earned in the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying stage and final tournament.

    20% of the average ranking points per game earned in the UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying stage and final tournament.
    Poland and Ukraine had the two lowest coefficients of the 16 teams in the tournament, but were each guaranteed a place in "Pot 1" because of their status as hosts.

    Interestingly enough, the same thing happened with Austria and Switzerland in 2008.

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      #27
      The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

      That was one of those cases we were discussing last week where GD was deemed unfair because Brazil, despite being piss-poor, went through.

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        #28
        The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

        Reed John wrote:
        The groups were terribly lopsided because of the home team seeding system. I expect that both Croatia and Denmark, on the form they showed, would have gone through in Group A, and probably in Group D.
        Can you expand on this? I don't understand how the groups are composed and would like to know because I agree that they didn't look very balanced this time.
        UEFA uses a seeding system based on results over the last European Championships as well as the last World Cup, and the current EC qualifers. However, seeded ahead of these are the holders (if they qualify) and the hosts. If the host nation is strong (Portugal in 2004, co-hosts Netherlands in 2000, England in 1996 - all of whom made the semi-finals or better) it looks balanced, if they're not (co-hosts Belgium in 2000, Austria & Switzerland in 2008, Poland & Ukraine this time round, who all failed to get out of their group), it can imbalance the groups. But, because the home nation wants to promote the tournament to the best of it's ability, it's best to seed them, so that they don't end up with stronger groups, and so the home fans know where they can get tickets for their own nation's games - imagine the USA not being seeded for the 1994 World Cup, and being ranked on ability, considering they had only qualified for one tournament in 40 years, and failed to score or gain any points.

        This time round, the qualifiers were particularly strong - the top 14 teams in UEFA's ranking all qualified, with Ukraine being ranked 15th, and Poland being a lowly 28th. Compare that to 2008, when the 7th seeds (England) were missing, although the hosts were in a similar position, with Switzerland ranked 16th and Austria ranked 29th.

        I've wondered if maybe the Euro qualifiers, and final tournament too, wouldn't be more interesting if the qualifiers were set up regionally. So, for example, there'd be a Scandinavian group, a British isles group, an Iberian group, Alpine group, etc. Some of the details would have to be tweaked to create more balance but I don't think it would really be all that hard. A group of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland would be especially interesting and lend itself to away fan support and winning the group would be seen more as a worthy goal in itself because the winner could claim to be the champions of Vikingland.
        The UK used to do this (in fact, all four nations requested it for the 1968 European Championships), but then Wales decided that they didn't want to do it again, as it meant that they didn't face non-UK opposition outside of World Cup qualifying, and they thought this was harming their WC qualification progress, and in turn making it harder to attract continental opposition for friendlies.

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          #29
          The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

          satchmo76 wrote: England scraping that 0-0 against Italy hardly constitutes England somehow having equal status.
          Well, it does, because the whole point of the sport is to score more than your opponent. If it were a league game, Italy wouldn't be given more points because they wasted all their chances. It's not like they had any goals unfairly ruled out.

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            #30
            The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

            If it were an FA Cup tie under the old format, there would be replays until somebody scored; do you think it is 50% likely that the scorer would be England rather than Italy?

            An observer can clearly make inferences from a drawn game about which will be the better side over a tournament or season, or if the two teams met ten times in succession. Those inferences won't always be correct but neither are they totally subjective. If Italy created x times more chances than England, one is entitled to say they were better, despite not being superior enough to guarantee that they would win every time they played them.

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              #31
              The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

              satchmo76 wrote: If it were an FA Cup tie under the old format, there would be replays until somebody scored; do you think it is 50% likely that the scorer would be England rather than Italy?
              There's that word again - "If". Italy had significantly more chances, yet converted 0% of them. You multiply anything by 0, you get 0. Who is to say that they would have finally converted one in a replay?

              An observer can clearly make inferences from a drawn game about which will be the better side over a tournament or season, or if the two teams met ten times in succession. Those inferences won't always be correct but neither are they totally subjective.
              I think you'll find that they are totally subjective.

              If Italy created x times more chances than England, one is entitled to say they were better, despite not being superior enough to guarantee that they would win every time they played them.
              Italy created x times more chances than England, yet scored the same number of goals. That's the thing with football, it's a team game. If Italy had actually had more shots on target, rather than off, and if Joe Hart had pulled off a string of great saves, it still wouldn't have made Italy a better side, because it would have just meant that Hart was doing his job better than the Italian forwards were doing theirs.

              Pirlo may have been a different class to anyone in the England side, but he was also head and shoulders above most of his team-mates too.

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                #32
                The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

                David Agnew wrote: However, seeded ahead of these are the holders (if they qualify) and the hosts. If the host nation is strong (Portugal in 2004, co-hosts Netherlands in 2000, England in 1996 - all of whom made the semi-finals or better) it looks balanced, if they're not (co-hosts Belgium in 2000, Austria & Switzerland in 2008, Poland & Ukraine this time round, who all failed to get out of their group), it can imbalance the groups.
                The most hilarious case of this was at EURO 2008, where the Netherlands topped UEFA's ranking. We were rewarded with being seeded on the same level as the hosts, Austria and Switzerland, and the holders, Greece. Glad to know that we were certain not to play those teams!

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                  #33
                  The 5th best team of Euro 2012 was...?

                  Smallcaps wrote:
                  Originally posted by David Agnew
                  However, seeded ahead of these are the holders (if they qualify) and the hosts. If the host nation is strong (Portugal in 2004, co-hosts Netherlands in 2000, England in 1996 - all of whom made the semi-finals or better) it looks balanced, if they're not (co-hosts Belgium in 2000, Austria & Switzerland in 2008, Poland & Ukraine this time round, who all failed to get out of their group), it can imbalance the groups.
                  The most hilarious case of this was at EURO 2008, where the Netherlands topped UEFA's ranking. We were rewarded with being seeded on the same level as the hosts, Austria and Switzerland, and the holders, Greece. Glad to know that we were certain not to play those teams!
                  Yeah, different co-efficient used at the time - straight points/games played over the last two tournaments, which was slightly weighted in favour of those teams who had an extra minnow in their group.

                  However, in 2008 the top teams realised that once Greece had qualified, there were three weak seeds, and whoever qualified with the best record would almost certainly be the seed in the group of death. And going into the last game, that was the Dutch, but the Dutch knew that if they lost in Belarus, they would leave Germany as the top seeds. Germany knew that if that happened, and they didn't beat Wales at home, they would condemn the Dutch to the top spot. the Dutch lost, Germany drew, and it backfired on them both, as the Dutch ended up top seeds anyway, and the German draw ended up being seeded sixth, and therefore in the third group of seeds. The only ones who won were those of us who spotted that the bookies hadn't noticed this combination of results, and landed a nice double of about 16/1.

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