Uefa ponder radical change to qualifying

A planned radical overhaul by Uefa of qualifying campaigns from 2018 could spell bad news for Ireland.

One concept being considered by the European governing body following last month’s congress in Croatia is switching from the current guise to a league format, provisionally entitled the ‘Uefa Nations League’.

It centres on clustering closely-ranked nations into nine divisions, thereby eliminating the all-too-frequent ‘big country versus minnow’ match so commonplace in qualifying campaigns.