Latest UEFA standings: England’s hopes of fifth Champions League place over after Dortmund win

Dave Tickner

There will be 36 rather than 32 teams in next season’s rejigged/wrecked Champions League, and two of those extra places will be awarded to the leagues who have been deemed to have performed best in Europe this season.

Those leagues are now certain to be the Serie A and Bundesliga after Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho-inspired Champions League semi-final first-leg win over PSG.

The system for working out the co-efficient rating that decided which leagues came out on top is (relatively) simple.

There were assorted bonus points for being in the Champions League group stage or topping a Europa League group, while every individual match win is worth two points, whether that’s in the Champions League, Europa League or Conference, and every draw is worth one point.

There is also  an extra bonus point available for reaching the next round of any competition. Champions League and Europa League carry bonus points for reaching quarter-finals, semis and finals, while those bonus points also kick in at the Conference level for teams who reach the semis and final.

So if you qualify for, say, the Champions League quarter-final by winning both legs of your last-16 clash, you collect five points for your country’s tally: two for each win and a bonus point for reaching the next stage. If you get through with a win and a defeat it’s three points (two for a win, plus the bonus point). And so on.

What that means is that from the quarter-finals onwards there are the same number of remaining points available for any team regardless of which competition they’re in, meaning countries with several teams in Thursday night action are in a potentially advantageous position. It certainly pays to at least have a spread of teams across the three competitions to maximise point-scoring opportunities.

The total number of points accrued by all teams from a particular league are then divided by the total number of teams from that league who began the season in European competition to obtain an average rating that determines the all-important standings.

So taking leaders Italy as an example, their teams have between them amassed 136 points across their European campaigns. They started the season with seven teams in Europe, so 136 divided by seven gives their current average co-efficient of 19.429pts.

This therefore means individual match wins are worth more to the score for a country that had fewer teams involved to begin with; a win for any French side is worth 0.333pts to the final tally because it is two points divided by the six teams they had in contention when the season began, while for England or Spain a two-point win is worth only 0.250pts to the total after it has been divided by eight.

As things currently stand the two teams to benefit from the new system would be Roma (fifth in Serie A) and Borussia Dortmund (fifth in the Bundesliga) but plenty of other teams will be keeping a keen eye on how this all shakes out. And Dortmund might just go and win the whole thing anyway.

 

1) Italy – 19.429pts
Home and hosed after losing only one team in the quarter-finals, and that unavoidably after Roma were paired with Milan. England and France can no longer catch them.

Total points: 136
Total teams:
Seven
Teams still active: Three
Semi-finalists: Roma (UEL, v Bayer Leverkusen), Atalanta (UEL, v Marseille), Fiorentina (UECL, v Club Brugge)
Eliminated: Milan, Lazio, Napoli, Inter

 

2) Germany – 18.357pts
Dortmund and Bayern reaching the Champions League semi-finals strengthened Germany’s hand significantly, especially with an Eric Dier-inspired Bayern’s progress coming at the expense of Arsenal.

Dortmund finished the job in the semi-finals with a first-leg win over PSG after Bayern managed a creditable draw against Real Madrid.

Total points: 128.5
Total teams:
Seven
Teams still active: Three
Semi-finalists: Borussia Dortmund (UCL, v PSG), Bayern Munich (UCL, v Real Madrid), Bayer Leverkusen (UEL, v Roma)
Eliminated: Union Berlin, RB Leipzig, Eintracht Frankfurt, Freiburg

 

3) England – 17.375pts
It’s over. Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and West Ham all exiting their respective competitions at the quarter-final stage left England needing some sort of miracle, like Bayer Leverkusen actually losing an association football match. Even then sole survivors Aston Villa would have had to go all the way in the Conference but with Bayern’s draw and Dortmund’s win in the first legs of the Champions League semi-final, the Bundesliga took an unassailable lead over the Premier League.

The highest coefficient England can muster is 18.250. Poor Tottenham.

Total points: 139
Total teams:
Eight
Teams still active: One
Semi-finalists: Aston Villa (UECL, v Olympiacos)
Eliminated: Liverpool, West Ham, Arsenal, Manchester City, Brighton, Manchester United, Newcastle

 

4) France – 16.083pts
Lille pocketed two points for a win on the night against Villa, but their penalty heartbreak at the hands and housery of Emi Martinez meant France were realistically out of it despite a pair of semi-finalists still standing. They needed something ludicrous to stay in it but PSG losing to Dortmund ended any and all hope.

Total points: 96.5
Total teams:
Six
Teams still active: Two
Semi-finalists: Paris St-Germain (UCL, v Borussia Dortmund), Marseille (UEL, v Atalanta)
Eliminated: Lille, Lens, Rennes, Toulouse

 

4) Spain – 15.313pts
No way back now for Spain after Atletico Madrid and Barcelona crashed out of the Champions League.

Total points: 122.5
Total teams:
Eight
Teams still active: One
Semi-finalists: Real Madrid (UCL, v Bayern Munich)
Eliminated: Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Osasuna, Sevilla, Real Betis, Real Sociedad, Villarreal