dirtynine said:
I think the idea is just to make the idea of friendlies more meaningful. I love the concept too, but I think qualifying would remain untouched. What would worry me more is the inability to schedule friendlies outside your region, or to control who you play. In the run up to big tournaments, for instance, it's smart to schedule some friendlies against teams that play like your group opponents. I don't know if this flexibility would be built into a league concept.
At the moment, the suggestion is that both World Cup/Euro qualifying and the new "Nations League" (I think that's the name, in parallel with the Champions League) would be regional within Europe, and therefore that European teams wouldn't be able to schedule money-spinning friendlies with the likes of Brazil or Argentina that both sides like to schedule. Personally, I think the value in scheduling pre-World Cup friendlies against "similar" opposition to your group opponents is minimal - surely competitive football with a purpose would be better preparation than substitution-filled friendlies. In any event, the globalization of football and the rise of the Champions League have helped to minimize the importance of friendlies, much as baseball's All Star Game has been largely rendered irrelevant by interleague play and massively increased television exposure: we now get to see the best players in the world play against each other in competitive matches all the time, so why should I care about meaningless exhibitions? I'd very happily watch the top two or three divisions of a Davis Cup-like football competition in perpetuity, which is basically what we're talking about here.
For my money, I think some non-European teams should be included within the Nations League; I don't think the Nations League can be fully global, especially if the competition is to be "owned" and run by UEFA, but you could rejigger the international calendar slightly to allow non-European teams to participate by invitation. At the moment, I think the plan is for nine divisions of six teams each, with 10 home-and-home matchdays per "league" season. But you could easily make it ten divisions and invite the six top-ranked non-UEFA teams to participate if they wish to, the caveat being that those countries' "home" matches would probably need to be staged in Europe or the Middle East for travel-related reasons (which is pretty much what the likes of Brazil and Argentina currently do anyway). I'd put two non-UEFA teams in each of the top three divisions and exclude them from the one-up, one-down promotion and relegation that will apply only to the European teams; at the end of each season, a new six non-UEFA teams would be chosen according to FIFA ranking, with any team which would have been relegated from the third division being ineligible for reselection.
To give an idea of what this might look like, looking mostly at FIFA rankings but fiddling with them a bit where it seems appropriate (e.g., on account of rankings anomalies perpetrated by World Cup qualifying):
Division 1: Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Brazil, Argentina
Division 2: Belgium, Switzerland, England, Portugal, Uruguay, USA
Division 3: France, Sweden, Croatia, Russia, Ivory Coast, Colombia
Division 4: Greece, Ukraine, Bosnia, Denmark, Czech Republic, Serbia
Division 5: Romania, Slovenia, Scotland, Armenia, Turkey, Hungary
Division 6: Wales, Iceland, Norway, Austria, Montenegro, Albania
Division 7: Ireland, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, Poland, Bulgaria
Division 8: Belarus, Macedonia, Azerbaijan, Northern Ireland, Moldova, Estonia
Division 9: Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Kazakhstan
Division 10: Malta, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Andorra, San Marino, Gibraltar
I may have slightly over-seeded the USA, but you get the point...anyway, look at Division 1! Who wouldn't want to see those six nations play competitive matches against each other all the time, with one of the four European sides guaranteed to be relegated to Division 2 and with Brazil/Argentina playing for FIFA ranking points which might keep them in Division 1 as well? Division 1 of the Nations League may have a corrosive effect upon the World Cup and European Championships, just like the Champions League helped cheapen domestic cup competitions over time (although I still think the World Cup in particular would continue to shine by being open to the whole world), but it would be a runaway financial success and help create more public demand for something it wants already.
(Note: instead of playing the Nations League over the course of a single year like the Davis Cup, you could expand it to two years - possibly with eight teams per division and more non-UEFA participation - and do less harm to the existing international calendar. Pre-World Cup friendlies could be preserved this way as well.)