# How to best organize a tournament (pairing matches & venues)



## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

This has always been a topic of discussion, but since the draw for EURO 2016 and the incidents of hooliganism at the tournament the calls for change of how tournaments are set up have become really loud. What are your thoughts on the issue?

The main aspects that get talked about are:
- providing the largest stadiums (and the largest cities) to the teams with the presumed largest travelling contingents
- keeping sepparated teams whose supporters provide a threat of violences in case of meetings 
- fixing a balanced travel schedule for each team
- having the fans buy tickets knowing for what matches they're actually applying for.

The two main ways of setting up the tournament seem to be:

1) choosing the venues, assigning them to matches according to the tournament table, and only at the end assigning the teams by random draw. This is the most random way of proceeding and the way that UEFA for example operates.

2) putting the teams on the tournament table and at the end assigning the venues to each match according to desired criteria. I think this is the way they work in rugby a lot if I'm not wrong. 

What is your preferred way? I left a third option in the poll for those who see a different way to organise the tournament.

A lot of voices are demanding the second way but IMO it is very flawed itself too. What I dislike most about it is that it represents pandering to the big teams to the detriment of smaller ones. Like taking away the possibility for fans from a certain country to enjoy their team playing in the biggest / best stadium in a tournament because the powers to be decide to award this to other more "deserving" teams, just because. It doesn't feel fair to me. Why shouldn't Hungary, Iceland (and the locals) be given the chance to fill the Stade de France? Are fans from England and Wales more "deserving"? These are examples that are actually given which is why I use them too. Also, from experience, when trying to best fix some aspects you end up screwing some other, and the problem with that is that it's one thing to have less than perfect aspect emerge from a random draw and it's a completely different thing for them to result of conscious decision from someone - it's not fair. The latest example is how pandering to Mexico in the Copa America Centenario meant screwing Uruguay in terms of travel distance. Before that, the way that group games were set up in the 2014 World Cup meant huge disparities in terms of travel times and climate assigned to different teams.


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## Nacre (May 9, 2016)

alexandru.mircea said:


> The latest example is how pandering to Mexico in the Copa America Centenario meant screwing Uruguay in terms of travel distance. Before that, the way that group games were set up in the 2014 World Cup meant huge disparities in terms of travel times and climate assigned to different teams.


That is inevitable in a large country like Brasil or the USA. They chose the cities for Mexico to make it easy for Mexican fans, not out of favoritism over Uruguay. The USA's team itself had to fly across the continent for its group stage matches.

I think this is a good choice for the USA, though it might not be best for every country. The USA has massive numbers of immigrants from all over the world, so it makes sense to try and give the immigrants a chance to see their motherland. IE the Italians in Boston, Swedes in Minneapolis, Poles in Chicago, Chinese in San Francisco, Brazilians in Miami, etc.


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## Bigmac1212 (Nov 2, 2004)

I think the NCAA uses A as their formula, but don't quote me on that.


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## CharlieP (Sep 12, 2002)

The obvious difference between the Rugby World Cup and the big soccer tournaments is that qualification is sorted much, much earlier in the RWC. The top three teams in each pool qualify automatically for the next tournament, so are known four years ahead of time, and the draw is made a couple of years in advance, with placeholders like "Africa 1" for teams not yet qualified. The organisers then have plenty of time to work out where to play the big matches (e.g. England v Australia and Scotland v South Africa) and the not-so-big ones (e.g. Oceania 1 v Repechage). In my mind it's done *too* early though.

By contrast the qualification for the FIFA World Cup and European Championships isn't completed until the previous autumn, with the draw done in December, and I think the venues have been sorted by then with luck determining who plays where (although I may be wrong).


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## Rev Stickleback (Jun 23, 2009)

I think one thing they should do is have the same official allocation for each team regardless of the actual size of the stadium.

IF each team got 6000 regardless of whether the ground held 35000 or 60000, there would be fewer complaints.


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