The draw for the fourth edition of the UEFA Nations League will take place in the French capital of Paris on Thursday, 8 February, with Rob Page’s Cymru returning to League B following their relegation in September 2022.
With 54 nations involved, Cymru will be in League B Pot 1 for the draw alongside Austria, Czechia and England, and will be in one of the four groups of four teams for the competition that will be played between September and November this year, with an additional knock-out round being introduced for the first time following the completion of the league stage. The extra round of fixtures for those nations involved will then take place in March 2025 with the final tournament scheduled for the following June.
This will be Cymru’s third UEFA Nations League campaign in League B. Promotion to League A was confirmed at the end of the second edition of the competition in November 2020, but competing against the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland in addition to preparing for and playing against Ukraine in the FIFA World Cup play-off final proved to be too much of a stretch for Rob Page’s squad. The opportunity of qualifying for the World Cup in Qatar inevitably took preference during an intensive month of five fixtures in June 2022.
Relegation from League A was eventually confirmed with a 1-0 defeat against Poland in Cardiff in September 2022. “If you had said to me at the start of June that we would qualify for the World Cup and have it go down to one game to win to stay in League A I would have taken that,” said Page at the time. “The play-off final against Ukraine did have an impact on our games either side of it.”
Cymru are once again targeting UEFA EURO qualification with the upcoming play-off semi-final against Finland in Cardiff in March, but Page will be confident that his teams seeding in Pot 1 for the latest edition of the UEFA Nations League will mean that a second promotion will be achievable when the competition returns in September this year, and that his squad will have benefited from the experience of testing themselves against Europe’s best last time around.
The four League B winners will be promoted to League A for the fifth edition of the UEFA Nations League, while the four teams that finish bottom of their respective groups will be relegated to League C. However, the expansion of the competition now means that the second and third placed teams in League B will compete in an additional round of fixtures in March 2025 that will act as a relegation / promotion play-off against the third placed teams in League A and runners-up in League C respectively.
UEFA Nations League 24/25 – League B
Pot 1: Austria, Czechia, England, Cymru.
Pot 2: Finland, Ukraine, Iceland, Norway.
Pot 3: Slovenia, Republic of Ireland, Albania, Montenegro.
Pot 4: Georgia, Greece, Türkiye, Kazakhstan.
UEFA Nations League 24/25 – Schedule
League draw: 8 February 2024
Matchday 1: 5-7 September 2024
Matchday 2: 8-10 September 2024
Matchday 3: 10-12 October 2024
Matchday 4: 13-15 October 2024
Matchday 5: 14-16 November 2024
Matchday 6: 17-19 November 2024
Knockout round play-off draw: November 2024
Knockout round play-offs: 20-25 March 2025
League A quarter-finals: 20-25 March 2025
Final tournament: 4-8 June 2025
