UEFA Nations League..

I think this is a good idea.  See my thread below from about 6 months ago about a different approach to organising European international football which is dying on its rear end.

I would integrate the entirity of qualification into a system like this.  I also like the idea of top teams playing each other more regularly and far viewer mismatches in order to try to put the interest and intensity back into international football.  The principles should be 1)We want to see more even contests and more significant games and 2)Every nation should still have a chance at qualification for every major tournament.

The system I like is that for each qualification cycle (World Cup or Euros) you have an elite group of 12 nations who all play each other once.  Below the elite group that leaves 43 remaining UEFA members who could be split into 3 second tier groups of 14 teams each, who again would play each once.  The top 6 teams in the elite group automatically qualify for the tournament while the bottom 6 go into a playoff system with the winners and runners up (and possibly more teams depending on the number of competition spots available) in each of the lower groups.  Coupled with that the teams that finished in the bottom 3 of the Elite Group would be relegated to the sub-groups for the next qualification cycle, while the winners of each of the 3 subgroups would be promoted to the elite group. 

To me this would ensure meaningful competitive football throughout the whole qualification cycle without noticeably damaging the qualification chances of smaller nations compared with what we currently have - and in fact would be to the benefit of small nations who get a 'golden generation' because right now they may find themselves buried in a group with 2/3 top nations and waste a couple of qualification cycles simply improving their qualification seeding which makes the route to qualification far harder than it should be.

Imagine if instead of that game in Germany on Wednesday being a boring friendly in which the players looked like they could barely be bothered to put their boots on England and Germany were instead competing for a final automatic qualification place or England were tying to stay in the elite group etc.  Suddenly so many more games would become so much more meaningful.

Something like this will never happen though because the main aim of qualification is to ensure that countries with lucrative media markets have the easiest route possible to major competitions - it isn't about improving international football as an entertainment product from it's current dire state.  In South America international football maintains it's major significance - that's partly because club football has gone down the pan in those countries but also because the top sides play each other on a far more regular and meaningful basis which is, you know, fun....