I think your second method is valid,
but i dont know how much regions we have, and with 32 teams seems more appropriate. What can be done is already preparing something like that for the 3rd nations cup, where the eliminated teams start round robins for their future in a 3rd (smaller) nations cup.

If I group by region...

North America:
USA Central 1-3
USA East
USA West
Canada

North Atlantic:
GB/Ireland 1-3
Neth/Flanders 1-3
Norway

Central Europe:
Poland 1-3
Lithuania
Germany
Aus/Switz

Southern Europe:
France 1-2
Italy
Czech/Slovakia
Croatia 1-2

Others:
Brazil 1-3
Aus/NZ
Isreal

You could put Norway in others just to make all groups 6 teams.

Or to keep geography...leave Norway in North Atlantic, maybe put Isreal in South Europe (not really, but close), change "Others" to South America/Oceanic.

It wouldn't be even, but then you can alter the amount that advance based on # in a group.

Like the groups with 7 get 4 teams moving on. The groups of 6 get 3, the group of 4 gets 2. Total of 16 teams make the elimination tourney

This way "bad" teams at least get 3+ games with each other. Perhaps the next season you can give bye's to regional winners or something to make it shorter?

The other advantage to the RR system is it allows for additional participation next season. You don't have to cut it off at 32 teams. You simply need to assign a number of teams that pass the RRs from each group.

If it is a matter of workload, I'm sure captains can set up games. That way it doesn't all fall on you.

Wait, why group the RRs by region? Wasn't (one of) the points of using seeds to prevent teams from the same country from meeting each other in the first few rounds? Now you are doing the exact opposite, forcing them to fight each other at the very beginning and only having space for one (or two) of them to go on.

Call me selfish (I'm on NL/FL #3), but I'd prefer being able to get past the group stages without having to eliminate NL/FL #1 and NL/FL #2 (whether or not we're able to is a different matter of course :p ).
Besides, if one of the other NL/FL teams is tied with one of the GB/Ire teams for the last spot to continue and then has to play their last match against us, we're in a very weird position, with a really nasty incentive to deliberately throw the match and let them win...

In short: RR preliminaries + single elimination "finals": sure, I see the benefits. But not with these groups.


ps. I'm not a team captain, this is simply my own, personal opinion.

I like the idee of small RR's like world cup soccer/football and then seed in elim tourney based on results of RRs with some teams being knocked out of elim all together based on RR. The actual Nations Cup is also RR style, so perhaps some sort of RR is in order here.

But i think it is better to mix regions and make RR's of 4 teams (like world cup soccer/football)

You would not knock your countrymen out, as 3-4 teams from your group could advance.

But, you could mix regions for sure. You could use seedings to form the RRs. That way each group is evenly weighted for the most part and you have the potential to have all you country advance

So maybe something like this (using snaking method on your points, avoiding same country if it occurs)...

Group A:
Brazil 1
Neth 1
France 1
Aus/NZ
Poland 2

Group B:
Italy 1
Poland 1
Norway
USA West
Czech
USA Central 3

Group C:
Isreal
USA Central 1
USA East
Neth 2
GB/Ireland 2
France 2

Group D:
GB/Ireland 1
Germany
USA Central 2
Lithuania
Serbia
Canada

Then fill in with other teams

We decided to seed team, and now why we do RR?i am against this RR, take to much time.

RR groups of 6 are too big. That's 5 group stage matches. In practice, I believe 5 group matches will take twice as long as 3 group stage matches (energy of these things wane over time).

Maybe we should just drop seeding altogether? Basing seeding on the votes of a handful people doesn't seem meaningful. Put everyone in random groups of 4, the top two teams advance. And as RvW hints to: Avoid having several instances of the same team (say GB&I 1 and GB&I 2) in the same group.

Best idea was seed 32 team in single elimination.

I thought the idea of seeding was not to have a round robin at all to avoid the drop-out that we experienced last time.

I'm still a fan of a RR though and seeding can help with this. But we certainly must have no more than 4 teams per RR. If you have a seeding, the best way to distribute them over the groups would be: (remark this is the same pattern as Gnuffone's example starting from Top 16 assuming the seeds finish in that order)

Group A: 1, 15, 18, 32
Group B: 2, 16, 17, 31
Group C: 3, 13, 20, 30
Group D: 4, 14, 19, 29
Group E: 5, 11, 22, 28
Group F: 6, 12, 21, 27
Group G: 7, 09, 24, 26
Group H: 8, 10, 23, 25

I: Winner A - Runner-up B
J: Winner B - Runner-up A
K: Winner C - Runner-up D
L: Winner D - Runner-up C
M: Winner E - Runner-up F
N: Winner F - Runner-up E
O: Winner G - Runner-up H
P: Winner H - Runner-up G

Q: Winner I - Winner P
R: Winner J - Winner O
S: Winner K - Winner N
T: Winner L - Winner M

U: Winner Q - Winner T
V: Winner R - Winner S

W: Winner U - Winner V

you are wrong

I: Winner A - Runner-up B
J: Winner B - Runner-up A
K: Winner C - Runner-up D
L: Winner D - Runner-up C
M: Winner E - Runner-up F
N: Winner F - Runner-up E
O: Winner G - Runner-up H
P: Winner H - Runner-up G

winner A should be with runner H....

andm ake an initial RR take at least 3 month. dunno if is good. go with single elimination is better way imho.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the majority of posts. Whilst an RR is an excellent idea for the teams who lose straight away, I think single elimination is better. If teams wish, I (or someone) can set up a double-elimination style tournament for them, so they get another game..

No Gnuffone, it's correct as it stands in my post. You want seed 1 vs. seed 16 in the round of 16, not seed 1 vs. seed 10. (I know there is a risk that it will be seed 1 vs. seed 2 but this is not unreasonable. If one of them finished below a seed 15 or seed 16, the seeds were 'wrong' in the first place.

Yeah, i think dom may be right. Maybe just double elim would be good enough to give more teams a chance but not lengthen it like a RR would

but 32 is such a nice number, you can so easily cut it equally;

round 1
make 4 initial RR's

round 2
make 2 upper tier RR's for #1's & #2's((mixed)
and 2 lower RR's mixing the #3's & #4's

round 3
make a champion RR for the upper tier #1's + #2's
make a pro-RR for the upper tier #3's + #4's
make a medium-RR for the lower tier #1's + #2's
make an aspiring-RR for the lower tier #3's + #4's

this way every team gets to play against 9 other teams