England face world number 1 in Nations League

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Portugal won the title last summer.

After the success of the First nations league last season, England want to go one step further and win after getting knocked out in the semi-finals by Holland and ended up finishing 3rd place. UEFA decided to change the format with the same 4 leagues however Leagues A, B, and C have 16 teams in those leagues and League D have 7 teams. If you're wondering what the difference is, last time the top 2 leagues had 12 teams, League C had 15 teams, and League D had 16 teams. This is different as the teams like Croatia and Germany,  that were relegated after the last edition was spared meanwhile 8 teams promoted via the change in format. The top 4 in Leagues, B, C and D are still up for promotion and the bottom teams in Leagues A, B and C are always up for relegation, and the top team of the League A groups are still going for the Nations League trophy.
England has another tough group. 

England was drawn in Group A2, and they have 2 teams that have caused heartbreak in England's hearts in the last two tournaments. One of them is the World's number 1 team Belgium who beat England twice in the World Cup and Iceland who embarrassed the Three Lions in Euro 2016. The other team in England's group is Euro 92, champions Denmark. Meanwhile defending holders, Portugal is in A3 and face France in a re-run of the Euro 2016 Final, Sweden and then Croatia which means that there would be a re-run of the World Cup Final between France and Croatia.
Meanwhile, the other Home nations are all in League B. Northern Ireland are in group B1 and face Norway, Romania and Austria. Scotland is in B2 and takes on the Czech Republic, Israel and Slovakia. Wales and the Republic of Ireland are in the same group B4, and they have to play Finland and Bulgaria. The other group in League B features Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Hungary.
Scotland looking used the nations league to effect the last time.




  League C includes a former European champion in Greece, who won in 2004. They'll be playing in C3 alongside Kosovo, Moldova and Slovenia. One of the other groups is group C1 features one of the hosts of this year's championships Azerbaijan. They'll be taking on Luxembourg, Montenegro and Cyprus. C2 features Armenia, Georgia, Estonia and North Macedonia. Meanwhile, group C4 feature Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Belarus and Albania. The bottom teams will face each other in a playoff scenario to see who will get relegated because there are only 2 groups in League D, so the losers of the playoffs go down, and the winners survive relegation.

Group D, however, have 7 teams, and D1 has 4 teams in the Faroe Islands, Andorra, Malta and Latvia. Meanwhile, D2 has 3 teams in that group with Gibraltar, San Marino and Liechtenstein. The matches will be played from early September, mid-October and around Armistice Week with the finals being played in early June.

I'll be back with more soon KRO

Mark


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