“The hard way for us” — England to reject automatic qualification

The English perhaps may be built differently as they are ready to sacrifice automatic qualification into the Euro 2028 if it means proving themselves on merit.

England may be co-hosting the Euro 2028, but the Football Association don’t want the easy way out through to the competition, which would have automatically guarantied the Three Lions instant qualification.

According to the reports, the European giant want to qualify into the tournament by its own merit through the playoffs, which the FA believes will better prepare the team for the actual occassion.

This unconventional stance comes as UEFA recently announced that the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland would host Euro 2028, while Turkey and Italy were selected as the joint hosts for Euro 2032.

The unique decision to allow five nations, namely England, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, to jointly host Euro 2028 has raised questions about the automatic qualification typically granted to host nations.

With only 24 teams participating in the tournament, the issue becomes whether all five host nations should receive automatic qualification.

According to reports in The Times, UEFA intends to limit the number of automatic qualification spots to a maximum of two.

Under this proposal, all five host nations would be required to participate in the qualifying phase, and the two automatic spots would be reserved for teams that do not qualify for the finals.

If three or four of the host nations fail to qualify, the two automatic spots would be awarded to the “best” two teams among them.

The criteria for determining which nations are deemed the “best” if more than two fail to qualify remains uncertain.

UEFA might consider using its coefficient rankings to make this determination, a situation that would likely favor England, given their status as one of Europe’s strongest teams.

The BBC has reported that the FA plans to formally request that England participate in the qualification process.

Their rationale for this request is to ensure better preparation for the tournament, as they believe it would provide the team with more meaningful competitive matches compared to a series of friendly matches.