UEFA fair play to them

More or less telling every small country that they are not wanted in the championships

Seeding for play-offs is so unfair.
I can understand seeding for the group stages & fully endorse that practice.
However, after the qualifying stages, we have 8 teams that all finished 2nd in their qualifying group. Essentially they have all achieved the same result & should all be deemed of equal footing.
In fact you could argue that a higher seeded side (ie France) did demonstrably worse than a lower seeded side (Ireland) in their qualifying group.
France managed to finish behind a team seeded below them in the group.
Ireland managed to finish ahead of a team seeded higher than them.
Then France are rewarded for underachieving in their group by being seeded.
Ridiculous.

They should seed all second place teams based on number of points they got in their group against the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th place. There was a table of the 9 second places from the WC group listed in order of how well they'd done and from that 1 should have play 8, 2 and 7 etc. That's a fair to do it.

Lumberg,
That is certainly a much more fair system than just seeding sides based on their world ranking.
In fact it could also have the effect of making many dead rubbers (ie Ireland-Montenegro) much more competitive. If the onus had been on Ireland to win the game to achieve a higher pts total we might have had a better match.

As it is a good, sensible idea, is very fair & levels the playing terms ever so slightly between the big sides & the smaller ones, it has no chance of being adopted.

I have no problem with them using the seeding once they clearly state it from the start.

The seedings are not pie in the sky but a fair assessment of a teams standing.

"The main fair play element that UEFA are introducing is that the higher seeded teams will automatically get the away game played first"

How is this fair play or am I just not detecting the sarcasm?

sorry toto bit of sarcasm all right

the playing of the away leg first is a bigger ride than the actual seeding imo. but that is a ride too

Why couldn't they just have 7 groups with the winner and runner-up from each group qualifying automatically?

Hopefully we get France!

Its basically giving higher seeded teams two bites at the cherry. First you get seeded in your group then your seeded in playoffs and get away tie first. Its a joke. For all FIFA and UEFA go on about fair play and wanting smaller teams to do well its nonsense. Platini is harping on about wanting smaller teams to do well in CL and crying over how english teams are dominating. Then they **kk over smaller countries in UEFA seedings. Its a total joke and its all about money. UEFA and FIFA are**.

That would be the fairest way db but of course it is too simple.

Due to the imbalance is it not reasonable to use a system that gets the best teams to the tournament? Without seeding then the the 12th best team in Europe could be knocked out through no fault of their own while the 17th best could get through by a lucky draw. It's fair to safeguard against this.

I agree with Ricky that deciding who plays hom first is stretchng it but it is still a reward for performances(and not your size or who you know) over a long period.

If people had a grievance with the actual method of seeding then I could understand that as it wold appear to be over too long a period and should give more credence to recent results like the golf rankings.

I agree with seeding the groups. But how are supposed lesser teams going to improve their seedings if the bigger teams keep on getting unfair advantages. Its money driven pure and simple. Always has been and always will be.