Here is everything you need to know about the UEFA Nations League, including how a side can qualify for Euro 2020.
What is the competition?
The UEFA Nations League is a new international tournament organised by UEFA, which aims to replace meaningless friendlies with more competitive fixtures.
Who plays in it?
The 55 member countries of UEFA will contest the tournament.
What is the format?
Each of the 55 member countries are placed into four leagues based on their UEFA coefficient ranking, from League A to League D.
League A contains the teams ranked one to 12, League B will have those ranked from 13 to 24, League C goes from 25 through to 39, while League D takes the remaining 16 sides.
Teams will evenly be split into pots within those leagues, again based on their coefficient ranking.
That means in Leagues A and B, the top four sides are allocated into pot one, the middle four into pot two and the bottom four go into pot three.
The same principle is applied to Leagues C and D, which both have a fourth pot.
Groups are then drawn randomly from within those leagues, made up of one team from each pot.
The teams within those groups will then play each other home and away in a round-robin format to determine the group winner.
Group winners in League B, C and D will be promoted to next league up, with the side that finishes bottom of their group in Leagues A, B and C relegated to the league below.
The side that finishes third with the worst record of all four groups in League C will also be relegated to League D.
The four teams that win their respective League A groups will qualify for the knockout stage, consisting of semi-finals, a third-place play-off and the final.
How can a side qualify for Euro 2020?
The four respective group winners from Leagues A, B, C and D will play-off against each other in March 2020 to secure one of four remaining qualification spots – one for each league.
If a winner has already qualified for Euro 2020 by the conventional qualifying campaign, the place in the play-off will be awarded to the next highest-ranked team that has not has not won their group.
When are games played?
The league phase is to be split over six matchdays during the international breaks in September, October and November.
The finals will then be played during the post-season international break in June.
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