The UEFA Nations League 2020/2021 Discussion Thread

[hahay]

~snip~
A league intended to replace friendlies ended up with the results of friendlies games. Unpredictable, random, weird...
France will end up 4th or 3rd in best cases. England too.
Meanwhile Turkey, Greece and Lettonie are the only ones to almost guarantee the 1st place before 2 rounds from the end of the group stage.

Yeah, it's a bit random.

I think it's good practice for the teams that didn't qualify for the world cup, and other weaker teams.

For the big teams it just seems like a bit of a waste of time and energy that could be focused preparing for the big tournaments, or just resting really. Some teams have crazy schedules which end up lowering the performance of their players.

Results like this make it more difficult to predict the next match, maybe they are just making this tournament a preparation for a bigger event. But believe me, when someone predicts the match later they will at least consider the head to head results and see results like this then their judgment will be chaotic. Because in the future not many of the predictors will realize what is happening right now, and if I had known from the start something like this would happen then of course I would have avoided it.

[CryptocurencyKing]

Italy and England had one of their worst days in this tournament yesterday certainly. Italy didn't even have a proper starting eleven and this cost them a big loss like 5-2. Germany didn't turn this opportunity down. England had a good starting eleven in my opinion but they still lost the match against Hungary home by a result like 4-0. This was really absurd to me and I wonder what really went wrong with England players in this match. Hungary shouldn't even have too many chances but they did much more in this.

Honestly the biggest thing Gareth Southgate has to learn from the last four games is to stick to his principles. What he’s been trying to do has failed him across 10 miserable days of the Nations League this month. He ditched his pragmatism to prioritise rotation, which has led to more questionable tactical decisions. I mean England's squad is packed full of young, vibrant, attacking talent, and while that doesn't necessarily guarantee success, the right mix of personnel should at least mean more goals. More excitement. Bigger threat. It’s obvious that the England squad doesn’t have a spine.

[diderdrogba]

Teams like England and Italy each are normally one of the contenders for whatever tournament they are participating in. But in the Nations League, they are both hopeless cases. The main reason of this is of course their not fighting very much for the win and their lineup choices are also important factors. This makes this tournament really interesting of course as there is a possibility for a surprise about the team to win the title. On the other hand there are still big teams that care about this too so we may not see any surprise anyway.

[cryptofrka]

England has scored only 1 goal in 4 games - only San Marino is worse with 0.
They managed to lose twice against Hungary and their 2 remaining games are Italy away and Germany at home - not the easiest draw.

This will put Southgate under immense pressure and is something he should have avoided. The World Cup is approaching and now he has even more doubts about the team selection than before.

[Daniel91]

England has scored only 1 goal in 4 games - only San Marino is worse with 0.
They managed to lose twice against Hungary and their 2 remaining games are Italy away and Germany at home - not the easiest draw.

This will put Southgate under immense pressure and is something he should have avoided. The World Cup is approaching and now he has even more doubts about the team selection than before.

I don't think this competition is a true indicator of the strength of national teams, and coaches should be too worried.
It is obvious that most of the main players of England, France, Italy ... came physically and mentally exhausted to this competition and were not at the right level for these matches.
Southgate still has plenty of time to prepare his team well for what is really the only thing that matters and that is the World Cup in Qatar.
I don't think anyone takes this competition too seriously.

[coco23]

I don't think this competition is a true indicator of the strength of national teams, and coaches should be too worried.
It is obvious that most of the main players of England, France, Italy ... came physically and mentally exhausted to this competition and were not at the right level for these matches.
Southgate still has plenty of time to prepare his team well for what is really the only thing that matters and that is the World Cup in Qatar.
I don't think anyone takes this competition too seriously.

I agree with you that this competition is not the main focus for the top teams, however it gives some indication in what state the national teams are. I don't think the exhaustion argument is valid much here. The World Cup would normally have happened now without long break before. Also in November the top players won't have a long break before the actual competition. France and England especially should see the performance of the last games as a warning sign, they need to come up with a good plan now.

[3meek]

England has scored only 1 goal in 4 games - only San Marino is worse with 0.
They managed to lose twice against Hungary and their 2 remaining games are Italy away and Germany at home - not the easiest draw.

This will put Southgate under immense pressure and is something he should have avoided. The World Cup is approaching and now he has even more doubts about the team selection than before.

The same can be said for France, and they are the current world champions... It's just that the Nations League is not a serious competition, but rather a warm-up, where the coach has a good opportunity to experiment with team structure and tactics under realistic conditions... That's why we see such results from the top teams...

[Fakhrulenclix]

I don't think this competition is a true indicator of the strength of national teams, and coaches should be too worried.
It is obvious that most of the main players of England, France, Italy ... came physically and mentally exhausted to this competition and were not at the right level for these matches.
Southgate still has plenty of time to prepare his team well for what is really the only thing that matters and that is the World Cup in Qatar.
I don't think anyone takes this competition too seriously.

I agree with you that this competition is not the main focus for the top teams, however it gives some indication in what state the national teams are. I don't think the exhaustion argument is valid much here. The World Cup would normally have happened now without long break before. Also in November the top players won't have a long break before the actual competition. France and England especially should see the performance of the last games as a warning sign, they need to come up with a good plan now.

it seems so, it is clearly seen by the number of rotations of players in each match. The big teams in this tournament don't seem to have more motivation to win the game, instead they are looking for a good position or squad to look at the world cup in the next few months.
The fatigue factor of the top European top players who have just finished competing in the league I think is not the reason but rather the priority of the national team which is slightly lacking in this UEFA National League tournament.

[Velvet78]

I see that Turkey are going on very determinedly in their league now. However it is completely normal as well because their group is full of piece of cake opponents like Luxembourg, Faroe Islands and Lithuania. They shouldn't stumble in any of the games remaining as well. I don't even understand how a team like Turkey can be in the League C now. They had a really bad period before. I know that and I hope they don't relegate to this league ever again after promoting to the League B.

It's just that Turkey took these competitions seriously after almost missing out on a chance to qualify for the World Cup from a not-so-difficult group. But even now they have ridiculous opponents and it would be a shame to lose to them. Although, France are in last place in the group and are not too worried. It all depends on willingness or unwillingness to play.

I started to see that they are doing really good with Stefan Kuntz now. They changed many managers before and their performance was really poor in the past despite having a solid lineup. But it looks like they are better now under the management of Kuntz. I like to see Turkey performing this much effective now but this league isn't a very realistic place to assess them still. We need to see them performing against big teams in important tournaments to have a clearer opinion about them.

[fuguebtc]

England has scored only 1 goal in 4 games - only San Marino is worse with 0.
They managed to lose twice against Hungary and their 2 remaining games are Italy away and Germany at home - not the easiest draw.
This will put Southgate under immense pressure and is something he should have avoided. The World Cup is approaching and now he has even more doubts about the team selection than before.

The same can be said for France, and they are the current world champions... It's just that the Nations League is not a serious competition, but rather a warm-up, where the coach has a good opportunity to experiment with team structure and tactics under realistic conditions... That's why we see such results from the top teams...

The condition of the French team is not good. We saw the poor performance of my France team in the Euro Championship. Almost all the players on the team are stars. But their bonding with each other is weak. If current France coach Didier Deschamps cannot solve the team's internal problems, it will be difficult for France to qualify for the round-16 of the next World Cup.

[Jackl87]

Italy and England had one of their worst days in this tournament yesterday certainly. Italy didn't even have a proper starting eleven and this cost them a big loss like 5-2. Germany didn't turn this opportunity down. England had a good starting eleven in my opinion but they still lost the match against Hungary home by a result like 4-0. This was really absurd to me and I wonder what really went wrong with England players in this match. Hungary shouldn't even have too many chances but they did much more in this.

I would not give to much about the results in the Nations League because in the end they are nothing more than glorified friendly games. In addition to that that were basically the very last games after a very long season. Especially the players from the premier league had a huge amount of games already and i would guess they just wanted this last 90 minutes to be over in order to finally get a few weeks of holiday.
That being said this last match could have definitely been a much needed boost of confidence for the german national team, because i think the quality of the players is currently not much worse then it was in 2014. The only thing that is missing is the confidence and the self-perception of how good they actually can play.

[Pandu Geddon]

The condition of the French team is not good. We saw the poor performance of my France team in the Euro Championship. Almost all the players on the team are stars. But their bonding with each other is weak. If current France coach Didier Deschamps cannot solve the team's internal problems, it will be difficult for France to qualify for the round-16 of the next World Cup.

we all know the names of big players are in the French national team. they don't play as a team, their game has no artistic value. it's very different when they play in their club. There is something wrong with the French team.
This will take the coach's important role in bringing this team together. France has a great history. fans certainly don't want to see France perform badly at the World Cup later.

[KTChampions]

The matches in September will be the last games before the world cup. And then there will be the World Cup.

Three months will pass until then and I would bet that they will be just as friendly matches. Many goals and lots of substitutions and new players. One thing I don't want to happen is a new Corona wave in September or October, that would ruin everything again.

I think that some teams will try to solve their tournament problems and play seriously (for example, England and France), but in general I agree with you that this tournament remains friendly.
As for the new wave of covid, it will not exist, it is no longer relevant, since everyone laughs at this "danger", a new threat may be invented (like monkeypox).

[Nasuhalugu]

The matches in September will be the last games before the world cup. And then there will be the World Cup.

Three months will pass until then and I would bet that they will be just as friendly matches. Many goals and lots of substitutions and new players. One thing I don't want to happen is a new Corona wave in September or October, that would ruin everything again.

I think that some teams will try to solve their tournament problems and play seriously (for example, England and France), but in general I agree with you that this tournament remains friendly.
As for the new wave of covid, it will not exist, it is no longer relevant, since everyone laughs at this "danger", a new threat may be invented (like monkeypox).

I also agree with you that when the Qatar 2022 World Cup comes happened, Covid19 and other malware will no longer be a problem.
Professional players face the greatest risk of suffering a serious injury at the UEFA Nations League event in September, which will jeopardize their chances of playing for the National Team at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, because treatment for a minor injury requires a minimum recovery time of three months, while a serious injury could take up to six months.

[suryana]

Teams like England and Italy each are normally one of the contenders for whatever tournament they are participating in. But in the Nations League, they are both hopeless cases. The main reason of this is of course their not fighting very much for the win and their lineup choices are also important factors. This makes this tournament really interesting of course as there is a possibility for a surprise about the team to win the title. On the other hand there are still big teams that care about this too so we may not see any surprise anyway.

We also recognize that the UEFA Nations League is a tournament initiated by FIFA to become a more competitive match and hold a final but this is just a normal friendly match so that teams like England and Italy do not take this tournament seriously.especially since we know that they try a lot of second-tier players so that the players can rest and don't get injured easily which makes it difficult for them to compete in this event but that is a natural thing considering they will play in the Qatar world cup next November so this match the coaches can try to find the best strategy before the world cup rolls

[Mr.right85]

With the nations League group stage reaching its final stage by November.. teams topping Thier respective groups needs to tighten their grip on those spots.. while the other teams that will be chasing the runaway leaders have to find form,play well and wait for the leaders to drop points..the teams facing possible relegation from the nations League have to find a way to keep themselves in the nations League..teams like Portugal and Spain needs maximum points in their final games so has to overtake or remain top of the table .. while teams like England and France and Wales needs to battle their way out of the relegation zone of their respective groups... come September...

[herurist]

The condition of the French team is not good. We saw the poor performance of my France team in the Euro Championship. Almost all the players on the team are stars. But their bonding with each other is weak. If current France coach Didier Deschamps cannot solve the team's internal problems, it will be difficult for France to qualify for the round-16 of the next World Cup.

I think in this case the French team and Deschamps are still preparing what steps are appropriate in the world cup and don't think too much about the failure in the UEFA Nations because there are indeed some clubs who are actually more interested in trying new things than focusing on winning and maybe this also what France is doing now.
But with things like this continuing to happen, it's actually not very good because it will definitely give them a bad stigma at the world cup later.

[el kaka22]

All the ones that will happen this month already happened, I do not care what the results was because I didn't wager much to any game and the ones that I did usually lost, only one win out of all the bets I made. I keep saying to myself that I will not wager on these, makes no sense to keep it going.

Let's face it, it is not going to be something that teams will care too much about because there is nothing giving them any advantage at all, makes no sense to keep it going that way. I have to say that the fact that England played this badly could be used as a proof that no team really cares about this that much, maybe only lower level teams that try to get their rare win.

[ilovealtcoins]

Let's face it, it is not going to be something that teams will care too much about because there is nothing giving them any advantage at all, makes no sense to keep it going that way. I have to say that the fact that England played this badly could be used as a proof that no team really cares about this that much, maybe only lower level teams that try to get their rare win.

England did not win any of the four matches, which is sad and embarrassing for England. England is not a weak team. They are a very renowned and traditional team. Fans do not expect such a bad performance from them. Maybe the UEFA Nations League title isn't important to them. However, they should have performed a little better.

[junmisakiro]

Let's face it, it is not going to be something that teams will care too much about because there is nothing giving them any advantage at all, makes no sense to keep it going that way. I have to say that the fact that England played this badly could be used as a proof that no team really cares about this that much, maybe only lower level teams that try to get their rare win.

England did not win any of the four matches, which is sad and embarrassing for England. England is not a weak team. They are a very renowned and traditional team. Fans do not expect such a bad performance from them. Maybe the UEFA Nations League title isn't important to them. However, they should have performed a little better.

I think it's all inseparable from the strategy of the English coach, they are one of the strong teams that did not show good performance on the UEFA Natinal League stage. in the matches that have been played they rotate players very often so it is very clear that they just want to prepare this team for the Qatar world cup in the next few months, not play fully serious in this UEFA National League competition, I see there are several teams that have quality strong but they have the same fate as England, for example like France.