Has Platini's grand plan for the European Championship backfired?
Uefa's 24-team reshuffle has provided early qualification shocks, but it might not matter in the long run
When Michel Platini revamped the European Championship, turning the finals from a lean 16-team tournament into a flabby, "roll up, anybody's welcome" 24-side affair in 2016, he ran into a blizzard of rebukes.
It seemed to many Uefa's president had messed around with a perfectly formed event. Suddenly, it may have felt to the best teams in Europe as if qualification for the finals was a divine right, not a hard-earned privilege.
Was this the main reason for the major nations' sluggish start to the qualifiers and for the spate of wholly unlikely results that have proliferated after the opening couple of rounds of matches?
The theory now is that, with two teams and sometimes three per group guaranteed to make the finals in France, Europe's top guns can afford an absent-minded off-day and still feel safe
Perhaps, despite inducing a degree of complacency among the elite, the Frenchman may have created a structure where those teams who once felt they had no chance of qualifying now believe the finals in France 2016 is not just some impossible dream.
The theory now is that, with two teams and sometimes three per group guaranteed to make the finals in France, Europe's top guns can afford an absent-minded off-day and still feel safe.
But there has been a "so what?" feel to these sensations. Portugal get beaten at home by Albania. So what? Let Ronaldo rest his injury and even if they finish behind Serbia and Denmark, they'll probably still qualify.
So the world champions Germany are downed for the first time by Poland? Great, but no-one believes it will derail their progress towards France 2016.