Wednesday, October 11 2017 12:51

ArmInfo. Following the qualifying matches of the group stage of the World Cup in 2018 in the European zone, in the League of Nations of UEFA the Armenian team  will play in the fourth division D together with the teams taking places from 40th to 50th. These are Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Georgia, Belarus, the Faroe Islands, Latvia, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Liechtenstein, Malta, Kosovo, Andorra, San Marino and Gibraltar.

The League of Nations was established at the UEFA Congress in the  spring of 2014. The purpose of the new tournament is to save teams  from friendly matches, which will be replaced by official meetings  with roughly equal opponents. The prize fund of the League of Nations  has not yet been named. The tournament will start in September 2018,  and its winner will be known in June 2019.

In total, the League of Nations will be 55, divided into four  divisions (A, B, C and D) of European teams.  In each division there  will be four groups, the draw of which will be held on January 24 in  the Swiss Lausanne. The divisions are formed on the basis of the  teams' positions in the rating of the national teams of UEFA, which  takes into account the results of the national teams in the  qualifying and final tournaments of the 2014 World Cup, the 2016  European Championship, and in the qualification of the 2018 World  Cup.  Division A will include teams from the first to the 12th places  in the ranking: Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, England, France,  Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Iceland, Croatia and the Netherlands. The  division will consist of four groups of three teams.  Division B -  teams, located on the lines from the 13th to the 24th: Austria,  Wales, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Ireland, Sweden, Northern Ireland,  Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic and Turkey. In the  division there will also be four groups of three teams.

Division C is the national team that has been ranked in positions 25  to 39: Romania, Scotland, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Albania, Norway,  Greece, Montenegro, Israel, Bulgaria, Finland, Cyprus, Estonia and  Lithuania. In this division there will be one group of three teams,  as well as three groups of four.

Matches of the group stage will be held from September to November  2018. As a result of this stage, the winners of the teams in division  A will enter the final tournament, which will be held in June 2019 in  the format of "Final Four". In December 2018, UEFA will determine  among the four participants the organizer of the tournament. The  worst teams in the divisions A, B and C will be lowered in the class,  they will be replaced respectively by the winners of the groups in  divisions B, C and D.  In the League of Nations will be drawn four  vouchers for the Euro 2020, which will be attended by 24 teams. They  can get any of the participants of the tournament, regardless of the  division. Qualification of the European Championship will be held in  2019, the draw will determine 10 groups of five to six teams in each,  the two best teams will enter the final stage of the competition.

Four remaining places at the European Championship will be played  among 16 winners of groups of all divisions of the League of Nations,  who in March 2020 will participate in the play-offs, which will  consist of semi-finals and finals. Butt matches will take place  within the divisions, that is, a ticket to the Euro-2020 is  guaranteed to receive teams from each division, including the  weakest.