There are teams in Europe that will almost never make it to any tournament…all they do is make the numbers and thus increase the number of games competitive countries have to play.
In Asia and Africa, they already have different stages of qualification, although it’s a different setup to what I think Europe needs.
My take is the countries with the lowest FIFA ratings should play a two-legged knockout fixture (or a one-off could be a better idea) and then proceed to the main qualifying round.
What’s your take on that?
I mean concacaf also does it with preliminary rounds in the gold cup, but I don’t think it’s necessary with Euros. There are more large and middle teams it’s too hard to get a good cutoff line of who should and shouldn’t have to go to preliminary.