Credit Where Credit Is Due For SI

The European Championships get expanded to 24 teams after 2012. I am quite impressed I must say. Well Done SI :thup:

I don't understand what you are getting at?

Currently the European Championships have 16 teams, But after 2012 UEFA are expanding it to 24 teams. So after the first in game European Championships the game also extends the tournement to 24 teams. Could have been easy for SI to wait until FM2013 to add this change. But they did it in FM2012. I am impressed. If this was an EA game they would have waited and have it stuck on the box as a new feature in 2013's edition.

I agree with this post

So how will that work? 4 groups of 6? 6 groups of 4?

24/2 = 12

12/2 = 6

6/2 = 3... then what!

I'm assuming that however the groups work then 16 teams make it to the knockout rounds!? Can anybody explain it to my simple self?

6 groups of 4, best four 3rd places go through...

I see, a little like the qualification stage then. Thanks for the clarification!

Oh, and yes, Kudos to SI for including this already.

It's basically just the sames as the crappy old WC setup (before they expanded to 32 teams) but with only European teams.

I always thought having 24 teams in the first round and only 8 getting knocked out in the group stages made for a lot of boring and inconsequential matches. I much prefer it when the top 2 go through as in the current Euro and WC - it makes it much more interesting, because teams need to win at least one game to get through. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I think the 24-team setup is a bad idea for the neutral spectator. And you get crappy teams lucking their way to the final playing dreadful football and despite coming 3rd in their groups (yes Argentina and Italy, I'm looking at you).

Well done SI for including it, but I don't think the Euro's should be expanded to 24 teams. There'll be too many crap sides, and the standard of football (which has been fantastic this tournament) will suffer as a result.

Thumbs up SI

Thumbs down UEFA

8 much weaker teams added

So just under half the 53 UEFA members will qualify. One of the great things about the current qualification process is that some of the bigger nations always end up sweating to make the finals right up to the last matches in the group.

Now it'll be like the Final South American World Cup Qualifying Group where half go up. Some will have their spot secured well in advance.

The final event will see many more processions like the Spain-Eire match yesterday.

The same happens in FM11.

Its a great addition from si.

And yes a terrible idea from UEFA, personally this tournament so far is building up to be a classic, only really seen 2 or 3 boring games, one of the best tournaments i've watched in a while. It will be terrible having 24 teams though, i mean Ireland have been poor in this tournament, but soon we'll be having 8 teams worse than them! At least we'll get lots of goals...