If you’re a casual football fan, there’s a chance you won’t be familiar with the 1983-84 season in Romania’s Divizia C, Serie VIII. It was so tight that in a 16-team league, with two points for a win, only two points separated second and 15th. Some teams avoided relegation on goal difference – and finished in the top half of the division. On the final day, the as-it-stands table probably exploded after 10 minutes.
At least there was only one as-it-stands table. We’ll need at least two to make some kind of sense of this week’s matches at Euro 2016: one for the relevant group, one to show the six third-placed teams. The expansion to 24 teams, an unnatural number for a cup competition, means that four of those third-placed teams will qualify for the last 16. Uefa will surely address that in the future by increasing the tournament to 32 teams – and then a money-spinning 64 if it can persuade the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Sheppey and Ibiza to become member associations – but for now it means an unbalanced system.
The whole thing is almost too complicated to function. At the end of the second round of matches, Ukraine were definitely eliminated and only Spain, Italy and France were through. When they kick off on Monday, England will have 12 potential opponents in the last 16, from Germany to Iceland. That’s if they get through. England and Germany, top of their groups with four points, could still go out; Turkey, pointless and goalless, may still go through. Under the current system it’s possible to progress without winning a game, without scoring a goal, or after losing your first two games. And yet, while it might be against the spirit of elite competition – less “one false move and you’re history”, more “one right move and you’ll make history” – it is going to make for a wildly dramatic few days, not to mention endless jokes about boffins.
The last group games are staggered over four days, with all 12 matches potentially interlinked. Some teams do not have their destiny in their own hands; worse still, they don’t even know whose hands it’s in. The significance of a goal scored on Sunday evening might not be apparent until Wednesday. It can’t be long before a team appoints a permutations executive. Ireland have an advantage in playing last because they will know the nature of the minor miracle they need to qualify. Those in other groups may have to make an educated guess what they need. It’s fraught enough when you are dependent on other results – ask Steve Lomas, the former Manchester City midfielder who, because of duff information about other games, doggedly helped ensure his side’s relegation in 1996 by keeping the ball by the corner flag – but it’s another thing entirely to be dependent on the results of games that haven’t even happened yet. When the England cricket team played their last pool game at the 2003 World Cup, against Australia, they knew they could win and go out or lose and go through. They split the difference: they lost a game they should have won and went out because of other results a day later. As it turned out, a win would have put them through.
The Euro 2016 system was used when the World Cup had 24 teams, between 1986 and 1994, and produced moments of farce, genius and heartbreak. When it comes to World Cup misery, all roads lead to Scotland. They were effectively eliminated from Italia 90 three times in a 24-hour period – first when they lost 1-0 to Brazil in Group C, after an astonishing injury-time save from Cláudio Taffarel; then when Uruguay scored an injury-time winner against South Korea in Group E (without which Scotland and Austria would have drawn lots to see who went through); and finally when Niall Quinn’s equaliser for the Republic of Ireland against Holland in Group F confirmed that Scotland would indeed be going home too soon. It’s not the despair; it’s the hope.
For some, that hope will be rewarded. The third-place system allows teams to squeeze through the cat flap, never mind the back door. In 1986, Bulgaria and Uruguay qualified despite not winning a game, and in Uruguay’s case losing 6-1 to Denmark. England could have gone through without scoring a goal: they famously won their last group game 3-0 against Poland, with Gary Lineker scoring a life-changing hat-trick, but, though they did not know it at the time, a 0-0 draw would have sufficed. (They would have played Brazil rather than Paraguay in the next round; working out who you might get in the last 16 adds another layer of confusion.)
There will be career-defining moments for some, particularly if the pattern of late goals continues. At Italia 90, Colombia needed a draw to reach the last 16, and were losing 1-0 to West Germany when the match went into injury-time. Their anonymous playmaker Carlos Valderrama was in the process of receiving a richly deserved bollocking from the great BBC commentator Barry Davies when he suddenly produced an ingenious pass that allowed Freddy Rincón to equalise.
There is no longer scope for drawing lots, which happened at Italia 90 to decide which of Holland and Republic of Ireland would be beaten by West Germany in the next round. If teams finish level on head-to-head results, goal difference and goals scored in the next few days, the team with the fewest disciplinary points will go through. If that is also equal, coefficient is the clincher. But if two teams were to finish level on points, goal difference and goals scored after drawing with each other in the final group game, like Holland and the Republic of Ireland in 1990, there would be a penalty shootout to decide who goes through. Thankfully for our collective sanity, that is not possible this time because of the results in the first two sets of group games. It is, however, feasible that a team could be eliminated because of a 96th-minute yellow card, which would be a niche variation on the penalty shoot-out villain, and a great opportunity for bookshops and travel agents to have their own Pizza Hut-style advert. It’s also possible that a team trailing 1-0 in their last match could push for an equaliser that they ultimately would not need, and then concede a second goal that would put them out. You do the maths.
No, please, you do the maths.
