When Uefa first began seriously discussing the prospect of a brand new international competition, back in 2011, their intentions were honourable enough. The lustre of national team football had faded steadily over the previous decade, largely due to the club game’s suffocating spread but also to the contemporary nature of the beast.

Friendly matches, seen by managers as valuable testing grounds but by the public and – in some cases – players as halfhearted trudges, had become little more than ballast in the calendar; qualifying for major tournaments had, for the leading lights, generally become a procession. If the latter owed partly to the geopolitical changes within Europe since 1989 and a slew of successor states whose football infrastructure lagged behind the rest, it merely emphasised that a little agility was long overdue.

The fruits of that shapeshifting will be displayed on Wednesday when, in front of a suitably curious assembly in Lausanne, the inaugural Uefa Nations League draw takes place. It has, to a large extent, flown under the radar so far but from September onwards it will be stitched into the sport’s fabric and replace the majority of friendly games. Uefa’s four-tier brainchild will rattle through six international dates by the end of November, completing a group stage that funnels into a four-team finals competition the following June.

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So far, so uncomplicated. There is, certainly for those who still hold international football in high esteem, an innate pleasure in the idea of countries competing in league form, effectively working their way up or down from Leagues A to D in a relatable format. A summer mini-tournament between, say, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain to decide the overall champion has appeal; there is also an element of interest in seeing just where the dust settles for aspirational smaller countries, who will play competitive matches against teams of similar weight. For Kosovo, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Liechtenstein it offers scope to hone a winning mentality where none previously existed.

Yet, even allowing for the fact that any tournament looks infinitely more appealing when there are fixtures to discuss, the lack of buzz has been glaring. If Uefa were looking to create a crowdpleaser, an event that had the dual benefits of helping football development while catching the wider imagination, the fear is that things have moved on at such a rate – even in the last seven years – that the Nations League resembles a dead weight. The clubs’ hold over most casual fans is almost total, in large part due to the unstinting efforts of news outlets, financial backers and social media accounts to make it so. Anything new needs to grab the modern attention span: while other sports – cricket an obvious example – tinker with tweaked formats to do exactly that, the convoluted nature of Uefa’s offering looks decidedly out of step.

Quick guide Uefa Nations League explained Show Hide What is the Uefa Nations League? - In an attempt to improve the quality of international football and reduce the number of meaningless friendlies, European football's governing body has designed a new competition to take place in years when there is no major tournament. The first winner will be decided in 2019. How will it work? - There will be 55 teams involved, split into four leagues (A, B, C and D) based on their Uefa ranking at the end of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Those leagues will then be split into groups of three or four, with each nation playing home and away matches against the other nations in their group. The winners will be promoted to the next level, while the nation that finishes bottom of the group will be relegated to the tier below. The winners of the four groups in League A will qualify for the 'Final Four' competition to decide the overall winner. How the groups have been divided - England's qualification for Russia means they have been placed in League A alongside some of the continent's most successful nations, including Germany, Portugal, Spain and France. Wales, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are in League B, with Scotland in League C. When will the Nations League take place? - The first two rounds of matches are due to take place in September 2018, with another two in October and the final two in November. The tournament then takes a break as qualification for Euro 2020 begins, although the Final Four will be held in June 2019. How is the winner decided? - The Final Four is the climax to the Nations League and will pit the four group winners from the top tier against each other. There will be a one-game semi-final stage followed by the final. How will it affect Euro 2020 qualification? - Every European nation will still have to play 10 matches to reach the finals, with two matches scheduled to take in March, June, September, October and November. The top two from each of the 10 groups will qualify automatically, with the other four spots decided by play-offs. Now for the complicated bit ... each Nations League level is guaranteed at least four play-off spots, although if the winner of a group has already qualified for the Euros, the next best team which has not qualified goes into the play-offs. Those 16 teams are split into four groups, with the winners qualifying for the finals.



Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images Europe

A competition that will initially be contested across 16 groups – four in most leagues, their sizes flitting between four and a patently unfair set of threes – already seems plenty to stay across but the most disappointing element reveals itself at the very end. In March 2020, nine months after the first Nations League has finished, the top four ranked teams in each league that have not already qualified for that summer’s European Championship – via that tournament’s own qualifying series – will be offered another bite of the cherry. They will enter a play-off round between themselves, with one spot guaranteed for each league.

This means that, unless Latvia are the eventual beneficiaries from League D, there will be at least one debutant at Euro 2020. But the concept could hardly be more absurd, particularly when Uefa have already given ample hope to potential first-timers by expanding their flagship competition to 24 teams. It smacks of an inducement to push their new event through, in the process lessening their own brainchild’s credibility and confirming its Europa League-ification. Scotland were among the occasional European Championship qualifiers to back the idea of a consolation place during early discussions about the Nations League, seeing it as a more compelling plus point than the near-abolition of friendlies and, unsurprisingly, they were far from alone. Perhaps Uefa deemed it a measure that would lasso its disparate members into the new format; soon enough the audience figures will show whether it was worth the added head-scratching.

It is in football’s interest that the Nations League works. The international game still produces, with regularity and at all levels, the most compelling examples of what the sport can be: an expression of a moment in time, a snapshot of battles won and struggles ongoing, a celebration of the communal in an era of the individual. It deserves the best possible chance. Should the Nations League prosper then Fifa is minded to create a global version early next decade; the nagging impression before we enter the labyrinth, though, is of a fudged opportunity to reimagine football at its purest.