England has won the UEFA Fair Play league, and the top side in the domestic fair play table (almost certainly Manchester City) will join the UEFA Cup in its first qualifying round in mid-July. The two lottery slots will be between Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Spain and France; the draw will take place at half-time in next Wednesday's UEFA Cup final - appropriately, at the Commonwealth Arena, Manchester City's home ground.
Though the decision on which sides join which leagues won't be made until next week, we know most of the promoted and relegated sides from the bottom half of the English pyramid:
V Prom - Aldershot Town, Cambridge Utd / Exeter Rel - Droylsden, Stafford, Farsley Celtic, Altrincham VI (N) Prom - Kettering, Stalybridge / Barrow Rel - Leigh RMI, Vauxhall Motors, Hucknall Town VI (S) Prom - Lewes, Eastbourne Rel - Sutton, Dorchester, Cambridge City* VII (N) Prom - Fleetwood, Gateshead Rel - Leek, Stamford, Lincoln Utd VII (S) Prom - King's Lynn, Team Bath Rel - Bedford, Bromsgrove, Cirencester, Cheshunt VII (SE) Prom - Chelmsford, Wimbledon Rel - Leyton, Folkestone, East Thurrock, Borehamwood VIII (N-N) Prom - Bradford Park Avenue, Manchester United Rel - (none) VIII (N-S) Prom - Cammell Laird, Nantwich Rel - Alsager* VIII (S-M) Prom - Evesham, Stourbridge Rel - Malvern, Berkhamstead** VIII (S-SW) Prom - Farnborough, Oxford City Rel - Newport IOW, Slough** VIII (SE-N) Prom - Dartford, Canvey Island Rel - Edgware*, Wivenhoe** VIII (SE-S) Prom - Dover, Tooting & Mitcham Rel - Horsham YMCA, Molesey**
* - Relegated for non-playing reasons
** - Candidates for reprieve if Division VIII (N) divisions expand to 22 sides.
Promoted from Division IX: Trafford, Salford, Atherstone, Loughborough Dynamo, Glapwell, Crowborough, Merstham, Concord Rangers, Soham, North Leigh, Totton, Truro, Thamesmead, Beaconsfield SYCOB.
Upsets
38 ARIS Salonika - AEK Athens 4:0 33 Bayer Leverkusen - Hertha Berlin 1:2 31 B. Dortmund - Stuttgart 3:2 30 Getafe - Almeria 4:2 19 Catania - Roma 1:1
They're breathing a sigh of relief in France, where PSG and Lyon beat lower-league Amiens and Sedan by 1:0, ensuring they'll meet in the cup final, and there will be an additional UEFA Cup place released for a side finishing at the top of League 1.
No surprises in Ukraine, where Shakhtar beat Dinamo in the cup. Nor in Serbia, as Partizan overcame lower-league opposition. If Partizan conspires to lose the league to Crvena Zvezda (unlikely) then Obscura Beograd are frozen out, not even to play a Cup-Loser's Cup match against Queen of the South.
Those Dutch play-offs in full
Turning now to correspondence, and Mr. Pokery wrote about the play-offs in the Netherlands.
The obvious question is why they thought that would be a desirable state of affairs to bring about. The only suggestion that springs to mind is that the play-offs are made for TV.
The logic seems to be that (almost) every side has something to play for in these play-offs, and (yes) the league becomes much more attractive to television. After the 34-game season, and assuming the cup-winner's place goes to a top-five side, the Eredivise is scheduled to split into seven bits:
1 - Champions. Season ends.
2-5 - European League playoff. Winner goes to the European League; others to the UEFA Cup.
6-9 - UEFA playoff. Winner to the UEFA Cup.
10-13 - Intertoto playoff. Winner plays off against runner-up from UEFA playoff for the Intertoto berth.
14-15 - Nothing to do. Season ends.
18 - Relegated. Season ends.
16-17 go into a relegation playoff, with six sides from Eerste Divise, where the champion is automatically promoted. The season in the lower league is divided into six periods of six games, and the winner of each period (or highest side not yet through) qualifies for the playoff, along with the two (usually three, because the champ will have won a period) highest sides in the final table not already qualified. The sides are ranked by their overall positions. First round is a simple home-and-away between Eerste 6-9. Winners join with Eerste 2-5 and the Eredivise sides, at which point the ties become best-of-three; if the first two games don't produce a clear winner, away goals or kicks from the penalty mark decide home advantage for the third game. Two winners take Eredivise places, and the draw should pit Er 16 against Ee 3 and Er 17 against Ee 2, keeping apart the Eredivise sides, and top two Eerste sides.
This year, there's a slightly different format, because the cup winner isn't in the top five.
1 - Champions. Season ends.
2-5 - European League playoff. Winner goes to the European League; losing finalist and 3rd place to the UEFA Cup.
6-10 - UEFA playoff. Winner plays off against 4th from EL for the remaining UEFA Cup spot; loser to Intertoto. Cup winner will not participate.
11-15 - Nothing to do. Season ends.
16-17 - Relegation playoffs, as before.
18 - Relegated. Season ends.
Next year, the play-offs become a little more simple: the top two go through to the European League, the cup-winners and next two go through to the UEFA Cup, and there's a four-team play-off between the sides immediately below for that last spot. The relegation playoffs remain.
Scotland
If there is logic to them, I wonder whether it might be a more sensible model to follow for Scotland's top league of 12 than the (actually reasonably sensibly designed and unjustly maligned) current 3½ matches per opponent per season.
A few observations here:
1) The Scottish clubs like having Rangers and Celtic visit twice a year. It keeps them rich. Reducing that to once would be such a financial kick that it'll not happen easily.
2) We're having great difficulty understanding the model above, and we've just described it. Try explaining that to your stereotypical football fan who's had a few tinnies. Especially that bit about the periods: should East Fife get a chance at promotion because easy fixtures allowed them 16 points in December and naff all elsewhere?
3) To have a promotion / relegation playoff would require Division B to finish at about the same time as Division A, not a month (plus Rangers delays) earlier. (With a will, this is not insurmountable.)
All that said, if Scotland were to revert to 16 or 18 teams in Division A, a Division B of similar size, and cutting some teams loose to regional amateur leagues, we reckon an arrangement like this would make for a good way to end the season, certainly better than the current playing out for pride amongst the bottom six. Fewer games might also avoid the fixture congestion we've seen this year, but then why has this occurred? The fixture pile-up has many causes:
- Rangers' success in reaching the final of every competition they've entered, playing (by our quick reckoning) 69 matches since last July.
- An artefact of the problems at Motherwell, both with their pitch and following the untimely death of Phil O'Donnell
- The postponement of Rangers' last-32 cup tie at East Stirlingshire, the SFA's refusal to allow the last-16 replay on an international mid-week, and a replay in the last-8.
- The postponement of matches to allow Scotland players a week off before the international against Italy; and to allow Rangers a clear week before Lyon.
- The length of the Scottish season, playing a 20-team league amongst 12 sides.
As we say, the most radical move would be to extend Division A so that the regular season was 30 games (16 clubs, as in Portugal) or 34 games (18 clubs, as in the Netherlands and Germany). This would allow the regular season to have very few mid-week matches and still end in late April, possibly with play-offs to decide promotion, relegation, and the last UEFA Cup place. Rangers (and Celtic, who could easily face a similar problem in a future season) would be in favour of this reform, and we can bet that the sides currently on the cusp of promotion from Division B would love it.
The smaller clubs in the top flight would still be less happy, because they would only receive two visits from Rangers and Celtic, not the three or four they have at the moment. On the other hand, would the additional security of knowing that they'll have those visits for the forseeable future help to raise security? Is there a case for some gate sharing (for instance, 5% of the net turnstile proceeds goes to the visiting club at the end of the season)?
