new era for European nation team football?

After seeing Belarus and Iceland qualify for the U-21 Championship which is only a 8 team tournamemt makes me feel that we are now in a new era. What do you guys think about this? I think now rather than having maybe only 20 nations contending for major tournaments we might have closer to 40 nations with legit chances to make tournament proper.

Not really. Big nations haven't qualified in the past, and the smaller nations from that time haven't made the step up.

Weather130 wrote:After seeing Belarus and Iceland qualify for the U-21 Championship which is only a 8 team tournamemt makes me feel that we are now in a new era. What do you guys think about this? I think now rather than having maybe only 20 nations contending for major tournaments we might have closer to 40 nations with legit chances to make tournament proper.

Iceland under 21's have impressed me when I watched them beat England and Scotland's under 21's 2-1 (I think).

The nation i'm keeping an eye on is Belgium. Lots of decent young players like Lukaku and Hazard so it will be interesting to see how they develop as a footballing nation.

Belgium, I made a thread about them. In 5 years they'll be up there. Quote me on this.

Agree with Belgium.

No idea why Iceland did that well on the qualifiers. Were no threat today

crump wrote:Belgium, I made a thread about them. In 5 years they'll be up there. Quote me on this.

I'll be with you on this!

As the France Euro 2016 will be with 24 teams which for those of you that haven't understood math is 8 teams more than the tournament format for 2012. 24 is close to half the teams in Europe and could create some upsets along with some big gulfs in class for a final tournament.

crump wrote:Belgium, I made a thread about them. In 5 years they'll be up there. Quote me on this.

You know that most people already know that they have a fantastic young team It's not a secret...

Alot of nations have their golden ages.

Czech Republic and Ukraine had theirs this past decade, Romania and Sweden in the 90's, and in the 10's, probably we will see Switzerland, Slovakia and Turkey.

The big nations will always be there. Belgium is a different story as football wise, they are quite similar to the Netherlands in terms of footballing infrastructure, just shitter teams and league. I expect Belgium to continue producing talented youth for time to come.

Belarus isn't changing anything. They just got lucky. They don't have any greatly talented players or else they'd be playing in Germany and Poland already. (us two scout them rather thoroughly).

Like I said, the big nations will always be there, and in addition you could probably count on seeing Belgium and former Yugoslavic countries up there. Anyone else is just having a golden age.

Then there is Poland. Shit for completely different reasons than most minnows having a golden age, and a sleeping giant. Russia can be counted similarly.

Greece has an Golden age too.

Potato-7 wrote:Greece has an Golden age too.

Euro 2004, they basically bossed that.

Bosnia and Herzegovina will be good in 2/3, may I say it?

Even England have a chance


Ok maybe I'm going too far