The Scottish Football Association has welcomed the added opportunity to qualify for European Championships through UEFA's new Nations League.
Europe's 54 football nations have agreed a new competition structure which will be held on dates normally reserved for international friendlies.
UEFA members will be ranked into four divisions from autumn 2018 and each team will play two or three other nations on a home-and-away basis with the winner of each mini-league going to a climax of semi-finals and final at a neutral venue.
The four division champions will qualify for the European finals while the other 20 qualifiers will come from more orthodox qualification groups.
SFA chief executive Stewart Regan told Sky Sports News: "It's a great piece of news, particularly for some of the smaller countries across UEFA.
"It will be a better use of the friendly dates, potentially greater financial rewards and, probably more importantly for some of the smaller countries, it's an opportunity for extra play-off and qualification places for the European finals themselves."
There will be some friendly dates kept after the Nations League is introduced and the SFA is looking to utilise their upcoming opportunities to play challenge matches in the meantime - with an Auld Enemy clash at Hampden in the pipeline.
Regan said: "We are trying to put our own fixtures together for the next couple of years and we remain focused on putting good quality matches against as high-profile opposition as possible.
"We remain hopeful and are in discussions with England about a return fixture of the one we had not too long ago."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article