EM 2020: Uefa prevents second draw with a trick

The draw for the European Football Championship 2020 is a bit simplified. At least there will be no need for a second appointment for a draw in the spring. As the European Football Union (Uefa) announced, all major decisions for the tournament's schedule will be taken at the draw on 30 November in Bucharest. This Friday, Uefa will draw the remaining lots for the playoff groups.

The controversial question is in which EM groups the participating countries in the play-offs will land the continent-wide European Championship. The Uefa had promised the hosts in advance to be allowed to play at least two home games in a successful qualification.

In the playoffs are involved with Ireland, Scotland, Romania and Hungary four hosts. However, these can only be divided into three groups, as there is no room for one of the hosts in the path with the weakest athletic teams (Georgia, Belarus, North Macedonia, Kosovo). Theoretically, it would therefore have been possible that the playoff path with, for example, Romania and Hungary would have been assigned to Group C with Bucharest as the venue. But if Hungary had prevailed, a new draw would have been needed to put Hungary in the group with Budapest as the second venue next to Munich.

This prevents the Uefa now by a coupling of two playoff paths. The path with two potential hosts (either A or C) is interconnected with path D. Specifically, this means: If, for example, the German group F in the coming week, the playoff path with Hungary and Scotland will be assigned, path D comes automatically in the group D with Glasgow as a venue. Should Scotland then prevail in the playoffs, the groups would be swapped, and the winner of the other path would hit Germany.

The playoff paths for the draw on November 22:

Path A: Iceland + 3 teams from Bulgaria, Israel, Hungary, Romania
Path B: Bosnia-Herzegovina-Northern Ireland and Slovakia-Ireland
Path C: Scotland versus Bulgaria, Israel, Hungary or Romania and Norway-Serbia
Path D: Georgia-Belarus and Northern Macedonia-Kosovo