UEFA announces new Women’s Nations League to start in 2023- ‘The system offers more competitive matches’
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Updated 03/11/2022 at 13:08 GMT
UEFA announced the proposals on Thursday in bid to make women's international football more competitive. The new Nations League tournament will also serve as qualification for the 2025 European Championships. The top two teams in each of the four League A groups will automatically qualify for the finals. A host for the 2025 tournament has yet to be confirmed.
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UEFA has announced that a new Women’s Nations League campaign will be introduced next year, which will revamp the qualification process for the 2025 European Championships.
The tournament is scheduled to begin next autumn and will follow a similar format to the men's tournament, which includes promotion and relegation between the leagues.
Three leagues — A, B and C — will be split into four or five groups, with the four winners of League A progressing to the Nations League finals, consisting of two single-leg semi-finals and a final.
Once the finals have taken place, attention then turns to the European qualifiers which commence in the spring of 2024.
However, the key difference between the women’s and men’s competitions is that the European qualification process will be determined by the outcome of the Nations League.
The top two teams from each of the four League A groups will automatically qualify for the Euros, giving every side a huge incentive to succeed in the Nations League. The remaining League A teams, all the League B nations and the top two teams from each League C group will then be drawn into a play-off to determine which remaining seven nations will compete at the tournament.
To complicate matters somewhat, the 2025 host nation will still play in the Nations League having already secured their place at the Euro finals. How they do could influence who seals automatic qualification and who enters the play-offs. Regardless of the outcome, 16 teams will be present at the Euros. Are you still with us?
On the new systems, UEFA said in quotes published by The Athletic: “Due to the three-tier league system, teams will play teams of a similar strength. The system offers more competitive matches and therefore more matches that can be won.
“That said, given the promotion and relegation opportunities among the three leagues, teams can still meet stronger or weaker opponents. The same applies for the European Qualifiers final tournament play-offs, where there will be matches between teams from different leagues.
“The new competition is built on meritocracy and encourages the long-term development of women’s national teams as competition cycles are interconnected.”
It means that reigning European champions England will face considerably higher-quality opposition, and a repeat of the sort of scorelines which saw the Lionesses trounce Latvia 20-0 in World Cup qualification appear unlikely going forward.
For now, Sarina Wiegman’s side are focusing on continuing their World Cup preparations, ahead of two friendlies against Japan and Norway on November 11 and 15 respectively.
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