Arsène Wenger

Wenger - Expansion will not help the Euros

By Richard Clarke

Arsène Wenger has expressed surprise and concern at the expansion of the European Championship finals from 2016.

At the end of September, Uefa announced that 24 teams would go through from the qualifying stages in eight years time, an increase from the 16 that competed in Austria/Switzerland over the summer.

Wenger is a long-standing opponent of the crowded international calendar and, speaking to Arsenal.com before the current break, the Frenchman was struggling to see the advantages of this latest move.

“They were talking about it at the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland but it was a complete surprise to me,” he said.

“I don’t completely understand the reason behind that. It makes the qualifiers less interesting because you will have over 50 countries [competing] and 24 go through.

“I don’t know the details. Will there will be one round more in the finals and they play a last 16 [round] to qualify? This means you will have 16 teams qualifying out of that 24 and that will make the [groups at the Finals] less interesting than this time.

“It looks like everybody, individually, understands the need to reduce the number of games but historically you always get more. It may be keeping everybody happy but I don’t think it will raise the level of the competition.”

 

[Tuesday, October 14, 2008]

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