Meenzer

Steady on.

The best way to wind up either party is to ask "Why are you so bothered about Kosovo anyway? It's a shithole." Apparently...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iUBsSlDXc0 https://vine.co/v/Oqed5KV2KFv Standard.

Long-range drone? Apparently it was a map of "Greater Albania", i.e. including Serbia, which is historically even more of a kick to the hornets' nest. That part of the world, bunch of savages </stevie>

Serbia-Albania suspended because an Albanian flag superimposed onto a map of Kosovo was flown into the stadium by a drone. A Serbian player ripped it down, a mass brawl ensued. Amazing.

You mean "www.noidon't@parklife_slash_com"

I just spent five minutes looking at that pic waiting for CT's hat to turn up somewhere. You win nothing.

Dadjoketastic!

I do agree the expansion of the end tournament itself is daft - 16 rather than 8 teams makes sense given the increase in the number of UEFA member states, but 24 is taking it too far. Still think pre-qualification is a flawed concept though. You either accept the geopolitical setup as it is or you don't bother playing international football at all (considering how arbitrary nationality is in the first place when you think about it).

Search?! The club should be giving him a free cow.

Now that's just cruel.

YEAH!

He's not even playing the same game, it'd be like Liechtenstein sending its Paralympic swimming team out to face Germany.

Maybe a setup like the European Team Championships in athletics would be an idea - have the current qualification system, so the smaller teams still get to play the larger ones at some point, but then at the same time as the regular Euros you hold several smaller tournaments at the lower levels too with the qualification determining which bracket you end up in.

A lot of the appeal for smaller countries is getting to play against the big boys, though, particularly when you know you're never going to be that good. Just look at the interviews with the San Marino and Andorra players ahead of the England games in recent years. Telling them "right, the biggest team you get to play is Kazakhstan and maybe in ten years from now you might be good enough to play Montenegro, but don't worry, you're definitely not second-class citizens or anything" is a bit rough.

Not much motivation when the "prize" for winning your pre-qualification group is to go and get humped by average teams like Ireland anyway, though.

I think that's where the mindset ends up, at least. But then a qualification round would be more in keeping with the Champions League approach to exclusivity and I'm more of an "unseeded European Cup" kind of guy, so y'knaa.

FYP

I don't see the point of a qualifying round when the "winner" will still get smashed by all the other teams in whatever group they end up in. Either let everyone in or don't let smaller nations play at all.

That's even more terrifying than the leech up the nose.

It's like fracking, only organic.

I thought all the changes were entirely justified and necessarily. At least that's the impression I got from CT after his careful and extensive analysis of the Conservative position.

36% turnout, so it shouldn't be that close come GE time, plus the Lib Dem vote held up to an extent (= they didn't lose their deposit, at least ) and some of those will switch to Labour now that the prospect of a UKIP MP in their area has become a whole lot more real (I know I would as a tendential Lib Dem voter). That's just one constituency though, and you're right, there'll rightly be concern that UKIP are going to do more damage in Labour strongholds than people might have realised. "Labour to UKIP" is a switch/swing that hadn't really been on people's radar much before. Now we're even looking at categories like "Disenchanted Labour supporter who voted Lib Dem last time as a protest vote and will be transferring their protest vote to UKIP this time" becoming actually relevant. From a purely psephological point of view, it's going to be a fascinating next seven months or so. If only it wasn't fucking UKIP making it so interesting.

Roubles.