Table ordering system at Euro2012 is over-complicated

I'm delighted to say that Euro 2012 has so far risen above expectations. There have been some interesting and some exciting games, and very few have been boring. No nil-nil draw yet either! Excellent.

However, there are always one or two things to gripe about (of course!).

As we half-way through the final round of group matches, it has come to light the extraordinarily stupid way of determining the order of teams in the groups. The number of points is the key way to order the teams and, thankfully, that is still the main way (but, as we see the way order is determined after that, we cannot be sure that UEFA will always retain points as the key method!).

If teams are level on points we go through this ridiculous ordering system:

1. head-to-head results
2. if three countries are level, goal difference from games between them
3. if three countries are level, goals scored in games between them
4. goal difference from all group games
5. goals scored in all group games
6. UEFA coefficient rankings
7. fair play ratings from the finals
8. drawing of lots.

All this head-to-head nonsense unnecessarily complicates the picture and means that you can't look at a league table and no who will qualify - you have to know all the results too. What is wrong with goal differences, then goals scored? This is supposed to be a LEAGUE system; i.e. it is results over the whole league that should count. By pinning so much on  head-to-head results, they're turning the league into a knock-out.

In other words, ignore numbers 1, 2 and 3.

In this more sensible method, Group One's qualifiers would have been Czech Republic and Russia (rather than Greece).

But there's no hope. Why keep something simple if you can over-complicate it?