Since Europe has 2 brackets, the first thing we need to do is split the countries into 2 groups.
UEFA has 55 members. As I have consistently done recently, I will deem Russia, Belarus, and Israel to be in a state of ‘should be suspended’. Try not engaging in invasions. This leaves 52.
We’re going to thus split UEFA into 2 brackets that contain 26 countries each. We’ll do this in a very straightforward way, for the most part.
I ordered the countries by FIFA ranking. Then started flipping coins1. One side placed a team in Bracket A. The other side placed a team in Bracket B.
In a few situations, placing one country in a bracket automatically triggers some other placements, serving two purposes: keeping nations which have ‘prohibited clashes’ apart, and keeping nations that have teams in each other’s leagues in some fashion together.
Spain: Places Andorra in the same bracket2, and Gibraltar in the opposite bracket
England: Places Wales in the same bracket3
Italy: Places San Marino in the same bracket4
Switzerland: Places Liechtenstein in the same bracket5
Serbia: Places Bosnia and Herzegovina in the same bracket6, and Kosovo in the opposite bracket
Armenia: Places Azerbaijan in the opposite bracket
When either bracket reached 26 countries7, the draw halted and all remaining countries went into the bracket with available slots8.
Bracket placement is absolute (but would be redrawn every tournament). It applies to hosting as well — stadiums are only eligible to host matches for the bracket their country is in.
The Draw
This is admittedly fairly lopsided, with Bracket A looking much tougher than Bracket B from a sheer depth perspective. Finland’s placement into Bracket A caused 13 countries to be forced into Bracket B without any draw. But I guess that’s just how the jets lag.
With the draw known, let’s quickly establish UEFA’s hosting rules, as those will be the same for both brackets.
Hosting Rules
Countries can host at most 2 events, only for their own bracket. The bracket Final Four host cannot also host a regional.
The Final Four requires a stadium of at least 70,000 seats. Regionals need to be in stadiums of at least 50,000 seats. All other events need to be in stadiums of at least 30,000 seats.9
Now we will look at each UEFA Bracket competition in isolation.
Bracket A
Selection Note:
The Slovenian Cup was won by NK Rogaska. However, Slovenia has relegated them from the top division for licensing issues (they would have survived on quality of play), so I am comfortable saying that they would not get a UEFA license either and thus are not qualifying for this event. The autobid has been granted to ND Gorica, who was the other Slovenian Cup finalist.
Hosting:
First Four: St. Jakob Park, Basel, Switzerland (Capacity: 38514)
Pod Sites:
Hampden Park, Glasgow, Scotland (Capacity: 52032)
Strawberry Arena, Stockholm, Sweden (Capacity: 50653)
Helsinki Olympic Stadium, Helsinki, Finland (Capacity: 36251)
Parken Stadium, Copenhagen, Denmark (Capacity: 36190)
Ernst Happel Stadium, Vienna, Austria (Capacity: 50865)
Stadion Poljud, Split, Croatia (Capacity: 33987)
Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Naples, Italy (Capacity: 54732)
Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, Seville, Spain (Capacity: 42714)
Regionals:
Stadio Olimpico, Rome, Italy (Capacity: 67585)
Johan Cruyff Arena, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Capacity: 55445)
Athens Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece (Capacity: 69618)
PGE Narodowy, Warsaw, Poland (Capacity: 58580)
Final Four: Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid, Spain (Capacity: 78297)
The Bracket:
The First Four in this case talks more about teams than matches, I suppose. In both cases, a microstate is playing a cup winner from a weak nation that is also not a first division squad. The other pair of 12 seeds are also not first division clubs, but in slightly better league systems.
Assuming Midtjylland can get past one of the worst teams in the bracket, they’ll get Feyenoord in their own country, setting up for a thriller. By beating KuPS, Rijeka can get a home-ish match in Split against AC Milan, but I don’t hold out much hope for an upset there.
Bracket B
Selection Notes:
Cyprus is a divided island and the system doesn’t seem to include clubs from the breakway Northern Cyprus region. Oh well.
AS Monaco is a French club that plays in Monaco. Monaco, despite being an independent nation, is not a member of FIFA or any footballing organization other than the French Football Association, so are entirely considered French. Thus, AS Monaco will use a French flag and counts towards France’s club limit (since they were good enough in Ligue 1 to earn an at-large bid).
Hosting:
First Four: Deutsche Bank Stadium, Frankfurt, Germany (Capacity: 47000)
Pod Sites:
Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff, Wales (Capacity: 33280)
Anfield, Liverpool, England (Capacity: 61276)
Estadio do Dragão, Porto, Portugal (Capacity: 50033)
Orange Vélodrome, Marseille, France (Capacity: 67394)
King Baudoin Stadium, Brussels, Belgium (Capacity: 50024)
Arena Nationala, Bucharest, Romania (Capacity: 54851)
Vasil Levski National Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria (Capacity: 43230)
Baku Olympic Stadium, Baku, Azerbaijan (Capacity: 69870)
Regionals:
Olimpiastadion, Berlin, Germany (Capacity: 71000)
Wembley Stadium, London, England (Capacity: 90652)
Estadio da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal (Capacity: 65592)
Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland (Capacity: 51711)
Final Four: Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France (Capacity: 80698)
The Bracket:
In the First Four, we once again see microstates versus a team that definitively is only here for winning their cup. Corvinul is a second-division side in Romania, and Drogheda barely avoided relegation from Ireland’s top flight, being the only first division side to qualify in any bracket that failed to average even 1 point per match.
Not really any suprise homefields lurking, though do you have to wonder just how much of a ‘home’ crowd Arsenal and Manchester City will truly see at Anfield, especially if they end up against a fellow UK opponent.
Final Thoughts
The AFC bracket was delayed due to needing to wait for a December 23 match result — but it will be available in the final post, as will the CONMEBOL, OFC, and WILD brackets (CONMEBOL was also waiting for results this past week). Just that left to go!
Technically, I generated a long string of digits being either 1 or 2 on random.org. Arguably, I should be using UEFA association coefficient here, but honestly it doesn’t really matter what the draw order is, since there’s no pots and every country has an equal chance of going into either bracket.
FC Andorra exists in the Spanish system. Unfortunately, getting relegated from the Spanish second division does not inspire consideration for an at-large berth.
Three Welsh clubs play in England: Swansea City, Cardiff City, and AFC Wrexham. The first two play in England’s second tier and are very viable options for the bracket. Wrexham, not so much. One possibly English club plays in Wales: The New Saints. The New Saints actually won the Welsh league (but not the cup), and overall a case could be made to call them either English or Welsh. Clearly no one is getting an English at-large bid out of the Welsh league. But even if we considered them Welsh, it’s hard to give them an at-large shot over Swansea and Cardiff. The Welsh league just isn’t very good.
ASD Victor San Marino plays in the Italian fourth division. Maybe eventually they’ll be good enough to make the bracket, but they really need to get promoted a couple of times. Regardless, it’s possible, so they need to be in the same bracket.
All clubs from Liechtenstein play in the Swiss system as the country only has 7 clubs (not counting reserve squads of clubs), which is just not big enough for a league. At-large bids are unlikely to be forthcoming as outside of Cup winners FC Vaduz, who play in the second division, there aren’t any clubs above the fourth division here.
This is not to say Bosnia and Herzegovina has any teams in the Serbian system, or vice versa. Rather, this is because neither recognizes Kosovo, creating prohibited clashes with that country for both. Serbia is the highest-ranked nation of the three, so when they get placed, that forces Kosovo into the opposite, which in turn sends Bosnia and Herzegovina back into the same bracket as Serbia.
In a world without suspensions, we would halt at 28, allowing the other bracket to end on 27 countries.
Actually, we halted a bit earlier. The draw got mostly halted after Finland with a single open spot remaining in Bracket A, since Armenia and Azerbaijan still needed to get opposite brackets. The rest of the countries got placed in Bracket B, then we placed Armenia, then placed Azerbaijan opposite.
We also technically have the standard major event rule in UEFA that all stadiums need to qualify as UEFA Category 4. However, explaining what exactly this means is complicated, and there are very few stadiums meeting the capacity minimums described that fail to meet this standard (e.g. the capacity minimum for Category 4 is a mere 8000). I’m about 95% sure every stadium I selected qualifies as Category 4. It’s possible I missed something.