The downsides, as I see them:
All told, I believe the benefits outweigh the costs, and have the added bonus of reducing the number of meaningless fixtures in far-flung places that fans would be mad to bother with.
To be sure, the number of European sides who qualify for tournaments does vary, and so does the qualifying method. Here is my simple guide to the more recent numbers:
12: 6 groups of 6, 2 from each qualifying. Teams come from 6 pots, with pot 1 being teams 1-6 by ranking, pot 5 being teams 25-30 and pot 6 the 6 "winners" of the minnows tournament.
13: as above, but with the 3rd placed teams competing for the final position (perhaps the 2 or 4 teams that come closest should playoff for the place)
14: 7 groups of 5 teams, 2 from each qualifying. Teams come from 5 pots, the first holding teams 1-7 by ranking, the 4th teams 22-28 and the final point consisting of 7 teams that survive a minnows tournament of all teams ranked below 29.
15 (European championships, minus host): as 12, except that the 6 3rd placed teams should playoff for the spare places.
22 (newly expanded Euro 2016 of 24, minus host and holder or 2 hosts): 11 groups of 5, with 2 qualifying from each. This would not require a preliminary minnows tournament, unless the number of UEFA countries expanded beyond 57 (and even then, perhaps only the very weakest would need to compete).
23 (24 team Euro 2016 minus host): 10 groups of 5, with 2 qualifying from each. 10 clubs to earn appearance in qualifying from all countries ranked outside top 40. Remaining 3 qualification spaces to be determined by best 3rd place sides, perhaps with playoffs to distinguish between them. It should be noted that the holder of the European Championship has never previously been granted automatic qualification, so this is the most likely number of qualifications spaces that will be up for grabs in 3 tournaments time.
Thus perhaps the most important component of the past century’s economic growth is the new commodity component—the goods and services of which people alive in the 1890s could dream but not purchase. Whenever we hear a sentence like “average GDP per worker in 1890 was equal to some $15,000 at 2008 prices,” we cannot help but think that the material standard of living then was about what we could obtain now if we had $15,000 to spend. But it was not. The simple valuing of the past’s production at the present's prices leaves out a very important part of the picture: the material standard of living then was about what we could obtain now if we had $15,000 to spend, but were required to spend it all on commodities that have been around for more than a century: no modern entertainment or communications or transportation technologies; no modern appliances; buildings, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure built using century-old technologies. And an income of $15,000 that must be spent exclusively on late nineteenth-century commodities is, for most of us, worth a lot less than $15,000.
"[A]n overwhelming majority of citizens said they believe that, during these
extremely uncertain times, our leaders have a responsibility to come
together,
sit the American people down, and lie through their teeth about
everything from
misappropriations of taxpayer dollars to the severity of the
credit crisis."
""Please, treat me like a child. Treat me like a five-year-old," Sacramento
resident David Cooke, 64, wrote in a letter to Congress."
