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Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: Lorric Date: 01-08-2013, 01:56 Edited by: Lorric at: 01-08-2013, 02:00	Since it's a hot topic right now, I thought I'd post this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23513947 Also includes stuff from the St. Johnstone manager.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: bert.kassies Date: 01-08-2013, 08:37 Edited by: bert.kassies at: 01-08-2013, 08:50	They could do a UK league first, and then send the best teams to Europe But more seriously: chartering your own plane and keeping a small airport open in the evening are choices they made. Maybe for good reasons. But since the distance from Minsk was only 140 miles other options (with some more traveling time) would also have been possible.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: Talesin Date: 01-08-2013, 11:16	Same problem Hødd faced, however it was over twice that distance. Dunno how bad it is to travel from Scotland to Belarus. But Hødd chartered a plane because otherwise they would have to change planes atleast two times, possibly 3, and it would take almost a whole day to travel.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: Forza-AZ Date: 01-08-2013, 12:07	I think Minsk isn't that difficult to travel to, but they play in Grodno, so I imagine there are no flights to there from a lot of places.

Author: JohnHarts
Date: 01-08-2013, 22:11

The article does mention one issue that significantly pushes up costs: fast track visas in CIS countries. That's unavoidable when you have rounds so close together. There are only two ways round that: reducing the number of teams competing or starting the competition earlier. I wonder if there is any merit in having the first qualifying round right at the end of the season? It would give them an extra week between later rounds.

Author: KRBY
Date: 01-08-2013, 22:40
Edited by: KRBY
at: 02-08-2013, 09:54

Like majority of Northern Europeans, it is natural to want to be regionalize drawing. The Manager said the key of why he (like most of the North I guess) really wants that; "We could have had a better draw and I'm sure they think they could have had a better draw." It's a "shame" why a North team to have to play against a Russian. Their opponent should had been teams like Hacken, Ekranas, Haka or whatever.

Party for them was over after 2008 when their man, Johannseen went away and Platini replaced him and changed the rules of the competitions. since then they don't have the benefit of the special treatment in the draw they had before. Just check the shameful example of 2007/08 qualifications https://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/history/seeduc2007.html
Very fair wasn't it?

Because of that, North teams could have a lot of chance of doing good, while other countries of similar level in the South could not.

I just used the Bert's Graphic Chart: https://kassiesa.net/uefa/graphs/crank-graph-display.php.

I checked the performance of the Baltic, Nordic, Ireland and Scotland since 2004 when the regionalization began until today. The "key year" of 2008/09 when rules changed is so significant for most of the countries. 2008/09 was the beginning of corrupt of all the Baltic states, Norway and Ireland.
Denmark corrupt began since 2010/11.

However the worst damage was for Scotland! No coincidence for the Scottish manager protesting. They were at the top 10 until 2007/08 and now they are 24th!

The other guy in this forum who said about Hodd, yes of course they had problems. A Norwegian team to be unseeded in the UEL 2nd qual. (3 rounds before the groups)? In such round their aeroplane should have travelled to San Marino or Andorra and next round to Lithuania (again check the treatment in qualification for the Norwegian teams and for south teams in 2007/08).

Author: StoutLeggings
Date: 04-08-2013, 09:30

While you assess the Scandinavian strength in the 07/08 season, I'd say that you picked the wrong season to compare with. In that season they all did quite well - AaB, Brann, Elfsborg, Aberdeen, FC Copenhagen and Helsingsborg all made it to the group stages despite not being seeded in the final round.

Only Zurich, Zagreb and Mlada Boleslav managed it from the Eastern group teams.

In 2008 you say the party was over - the year Denmark had it best ever with AaB beating Celtic, Man City and Depor, while drawing Man Utd at Old Trafford, and FC Copenhagen going out to Man City after the group stages (City eliminated 3 (!!) Danish teams that year - two of them on penalties).

In 2009 the part was a bit over. AaB could not follow up on last season losing in Sarajevo - but do you believe this was down to Sarajevos strength opposed to Deportivos? Manchester City? It was more likely due to AaB selling half the team.

The same year Brøndby and OB beat Eastern teams (Legia and Rabotnicki), before going out to Hertha Berlin and Genoa (Genoa was unseeded). Randers went out to another Northern team - Hamburg that year.

What I'm trying to say is that you cannot credit the decline of Scandinavian teams to the missing regionalization of the qualification. It is more likely due to a bunch of Eastern teams doing good, Scandinavian teams not doing good, and a bunch of missing luck.

The regions are important in my opinion, as it enables the small teams to not loose money on the EL (Hødd the latest example). It is not fair that a small team finding their way to Europe have to go bancrupt due to it.

I'd propose regions untill the 2nd round of qualification instead of the 3rd.

Author: Lorric
Date: 04-08-2013, 13:50
Edited by: Lorric
at: 04-08-2013, 13:57

@ KRBY

You're not going to draw that type of team unseeded in Q3 (Hacken, [only seeded due to beating Sparta Prague>, Ekranas, Haka, etc.)

You talked about Motherwell moaning about Krasnodar, but St. Johnstone were doing the same, and Minsk is about as good of a draw as they could have got from a strength of opponent point of view.

And Scotland's troubles began because of what happened to the league, not the change.

Regionalisation would be a good thing, as long as they don't mess with the seeding like they used to, a straight line between the teams. Good fot clubs, good for fans.

EDIT: Perhaps a better way would just be to keep the two extremes away from each other, to cut out your Iceland/Kazakhstan and Scotland/Russia style instances. Apply a cap to the distance between clubs.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: StoutLeggings Date: 04-08-2013, 14:10	"EDIT: Perhaps a better way would just be to keep the two extremes away from each other, to cut out your Iceland/Kazakhstan and Scotland/Russia style instances. Apply a cap to the distance between clubs." That's a good idea imo. A distance cap in the first to rounds would be a good addition.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: SirHenri Date: 04-08-2013, 14:41	Or UEFA could just give a small bonus amount of money, if there are bis distances between the club. Or just in general increase the awarded money a bit in the first rounds to cover those costs. Should be easy, as we're talking about some 10.000 Euros whereas they handle with billions every season.

Author: Lorric
Date: 04-08-2013, 16:27

Indeed, if UEFA could just eliminate this problem by subsidising travel, that would be great, but they'd probably be too tight to do that. Thus a solution they could actually put into practice.

I do think some money should be siphoned away from the bloated Champions League and pumped into the Europa League though. The CL can still dwarf the EL, but they could still take a significant chunk from the CL to the EL and keep that big disparity if they want it.

Author: eoinh
Date: 05-08-2013, 01:51

I'm Irish and a few posters are saying that the reason Irish teams dont do as well in Europe any more is due to the changes in the draws. Not so. Its two much simpler reasons.

1) The League of Ireland has simple got slightly worse than it was a few years ago

and
2) Because of the recession that hit Ireland many of the clubs that were full time went back to being part time. You also get less people going to games etc. Its just a coincidence that it happened during the same time frame.

Author: stjohnstonefan
Date: 20-08-2013, 16:06

As a St Johnstone fan I will say why our manager made his comments.
We have qualified 4 times in our entire history so European games are a big deal to our fans. Over the 42 years of ties some of our fans had been to every game home and away. 30% of our total season ticket holders went to Rosenborg away in the second qualifying draw, and a similar number wanted to go to Minsk. However the government in Belarus would not issue any visa's to fans on any less than a 5 day turnaround and with only 4 working days between the ties a total of 0, yes no fans were able to go to the game!
is football anything with out fans.
We also ended up in a venue with an airport that is only open for 4 hours a day as FC Minsk could not play at home.
If the rounds are going to be played back to back like this UEFA need to ensure that governments do not stop fans from travelling. The UK government is as bad as from speaking to media from Belarus TV station 2 at the return game in Perth it takes 3 weeks for a citizen of Belarus to get a visa from the UK government.

Author: Forza-AZ
Date: 20-08-2013, 16:23
Edited by: Forza-AZ
at: 20-08-2013, 16:26

It should be much easier to get a visa (for everybody). Why can't you just provide your passport number via email (just send a scan together with it from your passport) so the country can check this number with your home country and then hand this info to the border checks and send you a confirmation back. Then upon arriving they can give/sell you the visa at entering the country.

These checks shouldn't take much time.

Even better would be to abolish tourist visa at all so everybody can just travel anywhere for 30 days.
I know this might get into problems with people not leaving and the issue how to find them again, but why should everybody be "punished" for the few that take advantage of the rules.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: Nixda Date: 21-08-2013, 09:42	@Forza: The same reason as usual: big bad terrorism. You and all the governments seem to live in different worlds.

Re: Motherwell Manager Wants EL Regionalised
Author: Forza-AZ Date: 21-08-2013, 10:54	You can also check people without having these extensive visa procedures. Just like with a normal border control they check your passport and deny entry if there is something wrong.

Author: JPV
Date: 21-08-2013, 11:00

if all databases are real-time and up to date, you might. Also if document checking (originality/...) doesn't sometimes take hours, you might

, same goes for translations which might be necessary

.

Abolishing all visa for {30 days visits would cause to many people who would have to be stopped at the borders because they have the wrong/incomplete papers (f.i. a declaration who will sustain the visitor)