Nations League: 8 of 16 League A teams started with a new coach

Jürgen Klopp needed three games to win with Germany. The victory came on 1 October 2026 in Munich, in front of 68,121 spectators: 2-0 against Serbia. Tom Bischof scored in the 39th minute and Florian Wirtz in the 61st, according to the German federation. He was not the only new coach. In the 2026/27 Nations League, 8 of the 16 teams in League A, the competition's top tier, started with a new coach.

The mass turnover coincided with another change. Under a FIFA decision from March 2023, September and October became a single international break in 2026. An international break is the set of dates reserved for national-team matches: this time, 16 days, from 21 September to 6 October, with up to 4 matches per team. Matchdays 1 to 4 fit inside it. The question is what this window has already said, and what only November will tell.

The 8 new coaches of the Nations League and how they started

The count comes from UEFA's official line-ups. It compares who led each team in its last match before the 2026 World Cup with who led it in the Nations League. 8 of the 16 changed. Their debuts brought 4 wins, 2 draws and 2 defeats. In 3 of the 5 matchday 1 games involving these teams, both benches were new.

What this tells us: on UEFA's table of 2 October, the 8 teams with a new coach had 38 points, and the 8 that kept their coach had 25, with 22 games on each side. This does not show whether the change helped or hurt: 5 of the League A games were between two of these teams, and five of them are among the top six on UEFA's access list, the ranking the teams entered the competition with.

Germany shows the timeline of these changes. Julian Nagelsmann left on 3 July, after the World Cup exit against Paraguay. Klopp was due to take over on 15 August, according to the German federation's announcement, and his debut ended 1-1 against the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, on 24 September. In my reading, the 4-match window was only the first long test for these coaches: its results measure the start, not the work.

League A results and table up to 2 October

Up to 2 October, League A had 22 matches and 64 goals. Away teams won 12, home teams won 7, and there were 3 draws. Cardiff produced a comeback on 1 October: Wales fell behind to an Oscar Bobb goal in the 11th minute, equalised through Dan James in the 38th and turned the game around with Neco Williams in the 48th. It was the first Welsh win in League A, after 8 games without one, according to UEFA data.

What this tells us: on UEFA's match sheets, 12 of the 22 games ended in an away win, and none finished 0-0. A possible reading is that home advantage counted for little in this opening stretch, but 22 games are far too small a sample to call it a trend.

Three games deserve a second look. In Rome, on 25 September, Belgium won 2-0 and beat Italy for the first time in the Nations League, according to UEFA records. In Augsburg, on 27 September, Greece won 1-0 against Germany, in the first meeting between the two in the competition. In Saint-Denis, on 2 October, Italy drew 1-1 with Zidane's France, and the Italian federation's website wrote that the team had "passed its maturity exam".

The table below is UEFA's after the games of 2 October 2026. On that date, each team in Group A3 had played one game fewer, because Croatia v England and Spain v Czech Republic were scheduled for 3 October.

In A4, Denmark, Norway and Wales had 3 points each. The order comes from the head-to-head among the three, the regulations' 1st tie-breaker: each got 3 points in those games, and the goal difference in them, the 2nd tie-breaker, puts Denmark (+1) ahead of Norway (0) and Wales (-1).

What this tells us: on UEFA's table of 2 October, Portugal were the only team with 3 wins in 3 games, and France, Greece and Spain led the other groups. A possible reading is that the window has already shown who started in front, but, on points alone, nobody had a quarter-final place guaranteed.

International break 2026: why the five big leagues stop for 18 to 19 days

For clubs, the single window brought the longest autumn break in the measured series. The Soccer Addicted archive, which stores club matches, not national-team matches, gives the five big European leagues 18 to 19 days without a game in 2026, counting the return date set in the calendar (9 or 10 October), against a maximum of 12 in the autumns from 2015 to 2025.

A break is any gap of 7 full days or more without a league match; an autumn break is one whose midpoint falls between September and November, and the 2022 World Cup break in Qatar is left out. The measurement is as of 3 October 2026. Our guide to the international break explains why the league stops.

What this tells us: in the archive, none of each league's 30 to 31 autumn breaks from 2015 to 2025 went beyond 12 days. A possible reading is that the 16-day window merged the September and October breaks into a single block, 6 to 7 days longer than the longest previous autumn break.

In my reading, the new calendar is better for those who follow national teams and worse for those who live on club matchdays. According to the archive, autumn has fewer days off: up to 31 October, each of the five leagues totalled 22 to 24 days off in normal autumns (leaving out 2020, the pandemic, and 2022, the Qatar World Cup), and in 2026 it is 18 to 19.

But a Premier League or Serie A fan goes almost three weeks without a game, between the last round on 20 September and the scheduled return on 10 October. In Brazil, by the same measure, the Brasileirão stopped for 11 to 12 days.

Nations League: the games that remained after 2 October and what waits for November

After 2 October, 10 League A games remained in the window, all scheduled by UEFA. They were the 2 that closed matchday 3, on 3 October, and the 8 of matchday 4, from 4 to 6 October. The table shows Brasília time and Central European time. UEFA scheduled matchdays 5 and 6 for 12 to 17 November 2026.

What this tells us: on UEFA's schedule, matchday 4 set two leaders from the 2 October table against chasers, in Greece v Germany, on 4 October, and France v Belgium, on the 5th. This suggests, without predicting a score, that the lead in Groups A1 and A2 could change hands by 6 October.

In the 2026/27 Nations League, League A has 16 teams in 4 groups, and each plays 6 times in the league phase, home and away. The top 2 in each group go to the quarter-finals, over two legs, in March 2027, and the 2 worst-ranked fourth-placed teams drop to League B. The 2 worst-ranked third-placed teams and the 2 best-ranked fourth-placed teams play a play-off, an extra knockout round, against the League B runners-up.

Our Nations League guide covers the general format; the relegation and play-off rules described above are those of UEFA's 2026/27 regulations.

The Nations League decides more than the trophy. The 2028 European Championship regulations use the 2026/27 Nations League ranking to set the seeds for the qualifiers (the best-ranked teams, handled separately in the draw). They also give play-off places to group winners from Leagues A, B and C who fail to qualify through them.

The league phase ends on 17 November 2026, and only then will the question this window opened be settled: of the 8 teams that changed coach, how many will be among the 8 quarter-finalists?