Euro draw needs a recount

Please spare us...a Group of Death, possibly The Group of Death, has been pulled out of the UEFA hat. France, the Netherlands, Italy and Romania have been drawn into Group C for Euro 2008.

What sort of hare-brained scheme led to this disgrace? Well, I think it can be explained like this:

1) The number one seeds are Austria, Switzerland (the two host nations), Greece (the title holders) and the Netherlands (the nation with the highest Euro 2008/World Cup 2006 qualifying coefficient). The coefficient is determined by dividing a team's points total from Euro and World Cup qualifying and dividing by games played.

2) The remaining seeds are determined by the coefficient and are either rated a 2, 3 or 4.

Looking on the table at the UEFA Website, you can easily see that the two host nations are by far the poorest sides in the tournament and Greece would be tied with Poland as the best two of the four seeds.

This ludicrous system will result in two of the best teams in the tournament, the lower two teams in Group C will fail to qualify for the knockout round, while sides like Sweden, Greece, Russia, Poland and Croatia will go through, only on merit of the system devised by UEFA.

I don't have any problems with any of the teams who actually qualified for the tournament. They all deserve to be there and I hope some of the teams just mentioned go on to emulate Greece from 2004 and put some of the more prestigious nations to the sword.

However, I think there are some things UEFA (and FIFA, for that matter) could do to ensure the high profile games are played in the knockout rounds, where the drama needs to be.

First, teams from the same qualifying group should not play one another in the group stage at the final. Why do we need to see Italy and France, Sweden and Spain play again? Placing these teams in the same pot would eliminate this prospect.

Second, teams should be seeded consistently. If the hosts are the worst teams in the tournament, so be it. If the champions have made a hash of things in recent times, so be it.

Lastly, the coefficient system isn't bad, but some reflection of tournament performance needs to be included. Yes France's qualifying record has been abysmal in terms of the coefficient, but they played in the World Cup Final. Croatia on the other hand, collected a total of four points and failed to move out of the group stage at both the last Euro and World Cup. Yet their coefficient ranks them second behind the Dutch.

I realize that most of these systems are a work in progress and we are talking about the bureaucratic dinosaurs at UEFA and FIFA, but surely fans should expect better.