National anthems rang out to empty stadiums over the last few days, a sign that  international football has returned. All the home nations have now played their opening round of fixtures for this year’s UEFA’s Nations League, and it’s time to give my first assessment of what we have seen.

A late finnish…

Wales kicked proceedings off on Thursday night and claimed a late victory after Kieffar Moore headed home from a Daniel James cross. The Welsh had seen an early goal disallowed and the Finns were unable to capitalise as Leo Vaisanen missed a glorious opportunity to take a second-half lead, his volley striking the post from just a yard out!

James carried most of Wales’ attacking threat, as Ryan Giggs fielded a youthful side due mainly from injuries to key players. Giggs, sticking to his mantra that he will use the Nations League to develop young players, is looking towards next summer’s European Championships as his priority.

Thursday night also saw the Republic of Ireland steal a late equaliser to draw with Bulgaria, the other match in this group. Captain Shane Duffy saved new boss Stephen Kenny from an opening defeat after his youthful side wasted plenty of chances. Kenny will be happy to secure his first points as an International manager.

Same old same old…

Gavin Whyte came off the bench to grab a point as 10 men Northern Ireland snatched a point in Romania. Ian Baraclough’s first match in charge showed the same resilience and determination his predecessor’s teams had.

George Puscas put the Romanians ahead after twenty-five minutes and Josh Magennis ensured that at half-time Baraclough’s men faced an uphill challenge, with his second yellow card…and an early bath!! 

Whyte’s header secured a point, which is Northern Ireland’s first in their last five Nations Leagues appearances. Northern Ireland look to be just as hardworking as they were under Michael O’Neil which will go a long way to keeping fans happy.

Group B1’s other match saw Austria defeat Norway 2-1 as the two alpine nations battled it out in Oslo.

Dress rehearsal…

Scotland were unable to start their Nations League campaign with a win, ending hopes of a fourth consecutive victory as they were held 1-1 by Israel at Hampden Park.

Ryan Christie opened the scoring with a first-half penalty only for it to be cancelled out by Eran Zahavi who blasted home his 13th goal in as many international appearances. 

Steve Clarke will be happy with his sides ability to limit the Israelites to too many chances however the Scots lacked any form of cutting edge in the final third. Newly capped Australian born Lyndon Dykes was starved of any decent service and many of Scotland’s attacks were snuffed out before the debutant could get hold of the ball.

This game was seen to be a dress rehearsal for their upcoming European Championship playoff match in October but neither team were giving anything away in Glasgow.

Elsewhere in Scotland’s group the Czech Republic beat Slovakia 3-1 in Bratislava to take an early lead in the group. 

England struggled to break the ice…

Reykjavik exploded into life in the final 5 minutes as England beat Iceland 1-0 after both sides were awarded penalties in added time. Raheem Sterling converted his penalty as the clock struck 90 minutes just moments before Birkir Bjarnason blasted his over the bar.

Harry Kane thought he had opened the scoring in the games opening exchanges when he bundled the ball in from just a yard, but the Tottenham striker was offside. After this moment the game fizzled out and an industrious Icelandic performance limited Gareth Southgate’s team to only four shots on target. Iceland were playing without several key players, namely their creator Gylfi Sigurdsson and this showed as Iceland only produced two shots, none of which were on target.

The game saw both sides finish with ten men, Kyle Walker was sent off after 70 minutes for his second yellow card meaning England had to play the last twenty minutes a player short. Sverrir Ingason also saw red after the ball struck his arm as he tried to block a shot from Raheem Sterling’s close range shot. 

Sterling took the resulting penalty to clinch the win for a lucky England side who seemed disjointed as several key players were missing and many of the sde lacked match fitness.

Joe Gomez brought down Johan Berg Gudmunsson on the edge of the box just moments after the re-start earning himself a yellow card, to England’s delight Bjarnason skied the ball over the bar and into the empty stands.

England will take the three points and hope they can use this result as a catalyst to kick start their free scoring form of last year. 

One tournament too far… 

UEFA has been trying to evolve the international calendar amongst its fifty-five member nations. The master plan has been to create a league system that puts nations up against each other based on their rankings within UEFA. This means teams such as France and Spain will be drawn together and Gibralter and San Marino can battle it out in a competitive league based system.

Many fans enjoyed the inaugural tournament last year culminating in Portugal being crowned champions, way back in the summer of 2019. Since then the world has been thrown into turmoil and this round of fixtures… and the Nations League itself seems a little unnecessary. 

As the football calendar is now bursting at the seams, trying to fit in it’s heavy rotation of competitions, administrators all across Europe have been pulling their hair out. So why is the Nations League necessary now? This incarnation of the tournament does not even offer a guarantee towards World Cup qualification, a mere two playoff spots are allocated to the top two ranked teams (Nations League) alongside the ten runners up from the World Cup qualifying groups.

It seems to me as if we could have given clubs and more importantly the players, who are top athletes the opportunity to recover and prepare properly for their own club seasons. The footballing fraternity would have more than happily sacrificed what, in my opinion, is still a second tier tournament and allow the footballing world to catch up after the Coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on the whole industry back in March.

So what’s next…

The opening round of matches have not inspired many, if any. Games have been slow paced and mediocre ( I will never get back the two hours of my life as I watched North Macedonia score one more penalty than Armenia!). Adding fuel to the fire that maybe this year we could have scrapped it and allowed teams to play a string of games in 2021 to build up to the newly scheduled 2021 European Championships. 

The Nations league will continue over the weekend, Wales host Bulgaria in Cardiff on Sunday, Northern Ireland Host Norway in Belfast on Monday night and England travel to Copenhagen as they take on Denmark on Tuesday.

Alas in UEFA’s wisdom the show will go on!!

Written by Andy Jones