The UEFA Nations League has a lot of bad ideas, but some cool ones too

The UEFA Nations League starts during this international break, and it’s confusing a lot of people. Players admit they don’t get it. But it’s pretty simple when you have someone to strip out the jargon and simplify things, which is my job.

Here’s what you need to know about the newest international soccer competition.

Let’s get this part out of the way first. UEFA says that it concocted the Nations League to cut down on meaningless international friendlies, which feature low-quality, zero-stakes soccer. But replacing those games with better games is just a positive externality, as people like me who went to college for one (1) semester like to say. Basically, they created it to make money, but they’re not lying when they say that friendlies suck and bringing some stakes to these international breaks is a good thing. It’s just a little added bonus, not the point.

The problem with international friendlies, from UEFA’s perspective, is they don’t get to make any money off them. Individual federations get to sell sponsorship and broadcasting rights independently, then keep all the money. The Nations League cuts down on dates where federations can make money for themselves and gives UEFA a bigger piece of the pie.

But the European federations didn’t exactly fight this, because most of them will benefit from it. There’s only a handful of teams that can make really serious bank off friendlies, and four of them are going to play in the final tournament (more on that later), where they’re going to make more money than they would have off friendlies. And lower-tier teams are going to get an easier path to qualifying for the European Championships (more on that later too), which outweighs some friendly cash by a lot. The only losers in this deal are the teams that can sell international broadcast rights to their friendlies for good money, but do not make the final Nations League tournament.

Europe’s national teams have been organized into four leagues based on their rankings — A, B, C, D. League A has the best 12 teams in Europe, League be has the 13th-24th ranked teams, and so on. In Leagues A, B, and C, teams are separated into four groups of three, and League D, four groups of four teams each.

There’s promotion and relegation between the leagues. In each League A group, the first-placed team goes to the semifinals to face off against the other group winners, the second-placed team stays in the league, and the last-placed team goes down to League B. The same rules continue downwards — League B group winners go up, second-placed teams stay in League B, and the last-placed teams go down to League C, and so on.

The Nations League will determine seeding for the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying tournament, but there’s a strange wrinkle. Teams that fail to qualify for Euro 2020 through normal qualifying will have a second chance, and one team from each league will qualify for the finals.

Yes, one team from each league. One team from League D is guaranteed to make it to Euro 2020, even if all of them get absolutely waxed in normal qualifying. That means one of the following countries will make Euro 2020.

Azerbaijan
Macedonia
Belarus
Georgia
Armenia
Latvia
Faroe Islands
Kazakhstan
Moldova
Liechtenstein
Malta
Andorra
Kosovo
San Marino
Gibraltar

Some of you may think this is Modern Football at its worst. I disagree, and think it’s very cool that countries with less developed soccer programs are getting a shot to make it to the big stage. But uh... there’s a problem here.

The top four teams from each League who failed to qualify for Euro 2020 through the regular qualifying tournament will get into the second chance playoff, so it makes sense to attempt to get first place in your group. But if you get off to a bad start and you know you’re not going to make that playoff? Suddenly, it’s advantageous to get relegated on purpose.

No matter how successful the UEFA Nations League is, it’s never going to be a bigger deal than the European Championship. No one is going to want to stay up in their league more than they want a good chance at making it to the Euros. Dropping down means an easier road to the Euros during the next cycle. I don’t think anyone thought this through.

Yes. But I’d still say the UEFA Nations League is mostly good. International friendlies are extremely dumb and bad, but FIFA is never killing off international dates entirely. Any attempt to turn mandated bad soccer into potentially good soccer is worth our time.

If you’re in the United States, you can watch the games on ESPN+ and occasional big matches on ESPN’s networks. Germany vs. France is on ESPN2 at 2:45 p.m. ET on Thursday.