How To Fix Soccer's Knockout Stages

The single-elimination phase of the Euro Cup kicked off today with a rejuvenated Denmark sailing into the quarterfinals, and Italy joining them after facing a tougher test from Austria than most anticipated. It promises to be a thrilling knockout stages, full of high-quality football, and surely one or two stunning results.

But, at least from where we sit now, it appears this tournament’s knockout stage will suffer from the same problem the 2016 Euro Cup, the first edition of the expanded field, had. It’s the same problem we’ve seen in the last two Women’s World Cups as well, since that tournament expanded to 24 nations. Namely, one half of the bracket is absolutely loaded with most, if not all the top contenders of the tournament, whereas the other half promises to be a much easier path for someone else to reach the Final.

In this tournament, the ‘top half’ of the bracket now includes World #1 Belgium, defending champions Portugal, World Cup title holders France, and fellow tournament favorites Italy, who many considered to be the best team of the group stages, and Spain. Meanwhile, the bottom half is filled with a number of Cinderella contenders and England, Germany, and The Netherlands, all three of whom were among the favored sides in this tournament, to be sure, but also clearly a tier below the Frances, Portugals, and Begiums of the world. Two years ago, the knockout stages of the Women’s World Cup saw hosts and World #2 France, defending champions and World #1 USA, and trendy dark horse picks England, Australia and Norway all in the same side, whereas the other half of the bracket had only Germany and Sweden among the ‘blue blood’ contenders (and both ended up losing out to the upstart Dutch). Three years before that, Portugal notoriously slugged their way to their first ever major tournament title by advancing 3rd place out of the easiest group in the tournament, and being rewarded by a path of Croatia -> Poland -> Wales to reach the Final.

So why does this continue to be a problem at each 24-team tournament? Well, FIFA/UEFA’s insistence on allowing for a Round of 16 means more football— and, pertinent to their interests, more $$$ —which of course avid football fans won’t complain about! But it also means that for all the matches played in the group stages (36, to be exact), only 8 teams end up not making it to the next round, and thus several nations that finish 3rd place out of 4 in their group can still progress. This of course leads to a rather arbitrary knockout stage setup; where the 32-team Men’s World Cup, as is the case with the UEFA Champions League, sees a Round of 16 where group winners play group runners-up, this round in a 24-team tournament sees some group winners playing group runners-up, some winners playing 3rd-place teams, and some runners-up playing fellow runners-up. It’s, respectfully, a mess, with no rhyme or reason.

What’s the fix here? Well, the easy answer is to either further extend these tournaments to 32 teams (a move FIFA is making in the next Women’s World Cup, and one that is probably an inevitable next step in the Euro Cup as well) and set up a much more logical Round of 16, or revert to the pre-2016 format of just 16 nations, the best of whom progress from the group stages straight to the quarterfinals. However, the former runs the risk of further diluting the quality of and increasing the disparity within the tournament, while the latter not only means less football, it also squeezes out a number of teams and reduces the opportunity for a Cinderella story.

I actually think it’s possible to maintain the Round of 16 with a 24-team format and make it less lopsided, and I don’t think the fix is all that hard. All it takes is ‘re-seeding’ the teams after the group stages, setting up a Sweet 16 that is formatted completely on how you played in the first round of the tournament. Here’s what I mean: ‘seeds’ 1-6 would be the 6 group winners, ranked in order of their total points—and, in cases of tiebreakers: goal difference, total goals scored, then overall quality of the group. Seeds 7-12 would be the group runners-up, ranked by the same criteria, then the last 4 seeds would go to the 4 best third-place finishers. The only tinkering that this system may need is a ‘swap rule’ to avoid immediate rematches. Case in point, if the 3rd-best group winner already shared a group with the 14th overall team, one of the two teams can bump up or down a seed, depending on which option results in the lowest net change in points, goal differential, etc.

Let’s run this system for a couple noteworthy tournaments and see where we end up:

Euro 2016

Women's World Cup 2019

Euro 2020

Sure, it might be unfair to assume that Portugal, U.S.A., or this year's future European champion wouldn't still end up as champions. But as you can see, the paths they would have to take would be very different. And in each case, the tournaments would have had an elimination stage that was much more equitable, being based on the teams' performances in Round 1, while still being a ton of fun! Here's hoping that we see some alternative to the deeply flawed status quo in these 24-team tournaments soon, even if it's not in the form of this re-seeding model.