#UEFA Nations League to Replace International Friendlies from 2018

UEFA has announced a new international football competition to start in 2018.

The new Nations League has been conceived to replace meaningless international friendlies and provide more competitive action between nations at their level.

The Nations League will see the 54 UEFA nations divided into four divisions - think Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two. Those divisions will be further divided into 4 smaller pools of 3-4 teams who will play each other between September and November 2018 with the winners of each pool going on to play in the "Finals" series in June 2019.

The competition will be tied with the regular UEFA qualifiers for EURO 2020. However, the best four teams in each division who have not qualified for the tournament will get the chance to play off for the last four spots at EURO 2020.

In a way, this is a great move for international football as it will see the likes of Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and England playing each other in competitive football on a more frequent basis rather than in meaningless friendlies which somewhat dampen the occasion of the game.

Latvia would play more competitive football with its fellow Baltic neighbours

It will also mean that the likes of San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar and Andorra will get to play more competitive football at a level that suits them and possibly finally improve.

Football has sort of taken a leaf out of rugby which sees competitive test matches in between Rugby World Cup years through the Six Nations and Rugby Championship and Northern/Southern Hemisphere tours.

While clubs may cry about having their players play more competitive football, it does also mean that they don't have to worry about the so-called meaningless friendly matches in midweek, while giving the national FAs a bit more clout.