Gianni Infantino: Admits new European Championship format is 'not ideal'
UEFA's general secretary Gianni Infantino admits the devising of a format for a 24-team event at Euro 2016 is proving to be something of a problem.
With the final tournament set to be expanded from 16 nations in France, organisers are wrestling with the best way of organising a group stage that feeds nicely into knockout competition.
Infantino admits the final tournament is 'not ideal' and that some teams who finish in third place in the four-team groups will go through to the round of 16 knockout stage.
Organisers are also working on a way of ensuring that teams cannot collude in a match to ensure that both progress at the expense of another team in the group.
Infantino said: "This will be done by the end of this year. It is 24 teams and that is a problem - it is not an ideal final tournament because you will have to have a few of the third ones who qualify as well for the knockout stage.
"The question is how you make it in a way that results cannot be organised and you don't know in advance what you need to be the best."
Complicated
Infantino says UEFA will also review the Euro 2016 qualification competition to ensure that it is not 'boring'.
He added that UEFA may stick with extra assistant referees in the UEFA Champions League and European Championship matches even if goal-line technology gets the go-ahead in July.
He said: "If the technology is approved on July 2 we have to see what is approved, how it will work, how complicated or not it will be ... and then it will go to our executive committee.
"On goal-line technology you can see wh ether a goal has been scored or not. An additional assistant next to the goal can see this, but also some other things."
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