It now seems certain that Euro 2016 will be expanded to 24 teams after there was unanimous support for the proposal at a Uefa meeting today.
According to the Scottish FA's Gordon Smith, who originally put forward the idea after Scotland failed to qualify for Euro 2008, adopting it is a no-brainer.
"It's something Uefa has seen no real disadvantage to - it will only means a few extra days of the tournament and there is no down side in terms of loss of revenue," he said.
"The feeling in the meeting was everyone else was in favour as well. There's an appetite for it, everyone appreciated the advantages and no one spoke against it. It will make the qualifying competition more attractive as more teams come into the mix and that will keep the group alive longer.
"We just missed out for this tournament behind Italy and France but under the proposed new regulations we would have qualified."
Not everyone agrees. When the proposal was first mooted, our chief football writer Paul Doyle criticised it on this site as follows:
"Surely it boils down to this: the purpose of qualifiers is to sort the best from the rest, not to admit almost half (24 of 53) the original entrants. Professional sports tournaments are supposed to be elitist. Yes, they also serve as joyous festivals where fans from different countries and cultures can mix and frolic for the greater good of humanity and business, but what underpins all that fun is the feeling of having earned it. Take Latvia in 2004, say, or Slovenia in 2000. If the party is open to anyone and everyone, then no one is special and the magic dies.
"The brazen Scottish argument that teams who aren't good enough to qualify under the current system should be allowed in because, um, that would be nice, should be dismissed with the same blend of pity and scorn that would greet Darren Fletcher if he called for Fifa to make football a 20-a-side sport just so he could get into the Manchester United starting line-up. Because the result would be the same: messy mediocrity. The group stages of the European Championship finals, which are now excitingly tough because teams are closely matched, would be lopsided and boring. The effect of expansion would simply be to saddle the tournament with a needless intermediate qualifying round. So, in sporting terms, it would be despicable."
A final decision will be taken by Uefa's executive committee in September but there was no opposition to the plan today. But what do you make of the idea?
