It turns out that Michel Platini's ­expanded Euros are not all that they first seemed. Who knew that a 24-team tournament would be incredibly complicated? Well, apart from everyone.

First of all, let's start with the whole school sports day nature of the thing. It's like a Cub Scout five-a-side tournament that has been hit with bad weather and no one knows who is playing who or when. Everyone has to crowd around the whiteboard while the coach (who is also someone's dad) has to go and ask a volunteer (who is someone else's mum) what's going on.

That was the scenario facing ­Turkey and Albania this week. ­Albania played Sunday and Turkey played Tuesday but because of the expanded format - where the four best of the six third-placed teams go through to the knockout stages - they had to wait until Wednesday night to find out if they were still competing in the Euros. Madness.

It doesn't make much more sense for the teams who actually went through. The fact that it was 24 teams, rather than a more mathematically favorable 16 or 32 teams, has made for what can only be described as strange bedfellows. In order to keep the teams who have competed against each other in the group stages from playing one another again they have had to pull some number voodoo.

That means two sides of the ­bracket where on one some first-place teams get to play third-placed teams for no discernible reason other than it will allow an awkward 24-team ­tournament to carry on. Lo and behold, it's come back to bite UEFA on their grass-fed rump. One side contains Germany, France, Spain, Italy - winners of 20 major titles ­between them - while the other, ­containing Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales, Hungary and Switzerland et al, has never won a major competition ­between them.

It's so bizarre that Belgium ­manager Marc Wilmots has gone from being widely pilloried for losing their first game to being praised as a ­genius for avoiding the tough side of the draw. While Iceland have been ridiculed for winning rather than drawing their final group game as they would have ended up in the "easier" side of the draw - although playing Croatia would surely be less preferable to playing England.

So how do you solve a problem like the Euros? Well, there are a few options. First of all, let 32 European teams compete. Sure, that's the vast majority of ­UEFA's 55 members but it would mean

less qualifying and more of how ­people actually want to watch their soccer, in club form. It would also maybe allow for a Europe-wide ­winter break.

The other option is taking a leaf out of the Copa America's book. They don't have enough teams so they have a guest. Such a guest for the Euros could mean copying Eurovision and allowing Australia in or it could mean being cynical and inviting the likes of China to make up the numbers. ­Failing that, invite Scotland. It might be the only way they will qualify.

The author is a Shanghai-based freelance writer. jmawhite@gmail.com