Will the Premier League earn a fifth Champions League place again for next season?
With six English teams participating in this season’s Champions League, and the league stage at its halfway point, it’s already worth having a look to see just how many Premier League teams might get a crack at the Big Cup again next season.
There will once again be 36 rather than 32 teams in next season’s Champions League, and two of those extra places will once again be awarded to the leagues who have been deemed to have performed best in Europe this season.
In six of the last eight seasons, England would have claimed one of those two spots. The first time it actually mattered, they didn’t; England trailed in behind Germany and Italy, with Newcastle and Man United’s pre-Christmas exits from Europe a key early factor before a series of disappointments across all three competitions in the knockout stages.
It proved to be quite a significant sliding doors moment; had England secured a fifth spot that season it would have gone to Tottenham, who instead went off and won the Europa League.
They are thus the sixth Premier League entrant this season, with Newcastle’s prize for finishing fifth upgraded to a Champions League spot with England – unsurprisingly – coming out miles ahead at the top of the overall rankings on the back of winning two of the three trophies as well as having a losing finalist and semi-finalist.
And the whopping nine English teams in European competition this season have already made a strong start in the quest to secure another bonus spot next season.
The system for working out the co-efficient rating that decides which leagues come out on top is (relatively) simple.
Every win in Europe – whether Champions, Europa or Conference League – is worth two points to your country’s tally, and every draw one. There are then assorted bonus points to be awarded based on finishing positions in the bumper final league tables as well as further points for reaching different knockout rounds.
All teams competing in the Champions League phase are awarded six points just for being there – a huge early boost to England’s tally with two thirds of their nine teams in that competition. You get an additional 0.25 points for finishing 24th in the final table, with an extra 0.25 points on offer for each position from there up. So 23rd gets 0.5, 22nd gets 0.75 and so on all the way up to six points for the table-toppers. The Europa League has no bonus points for competing, but again offers 0.25 points to the team that ends 24th and six to the team finishing first on the same sliding scale as the Champions League.
Just to keep us all on our toes, it’s slightly different again in the Conference. Here you get 0.125 points for 24th, and an extra 0.125 points for each position up to ninth, and then 0.25 points for each extra position you can climb in the top eight.
Long story short, the table-toppers in the Champions League get 12 points altogether, Europa League toppers six points, and Conference League four.
Champions League teams then get an extra 1.5 points for each knockout round they participate in (last 16, quarter-final, semi-final, final), Europa League teams one point for each round, and Conference League teams 0.5 points. There are no bonus points on offer for reaching the playoff round that teams finishing between ninth and 24th in each competition have to deal with, but you do still get result points.
So if you qualify for, say, the Champions League quarter-final by winning both legs of your last-16 clash, you collect 5.5 points for your country’s tally: two for each win and a bonus 1.5 points for reaching the next stage. If you get through with a win and a defeat it’s 3.5 points (two for a win, plus the qualification bonus). And so on.
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.
This also 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 Portuguese side this season, for instance, is worth 0.400pts to the final tally because it is two points divided by the five teams they had in contention when the season began, while for England a two-point win is worth only 0.222pts to the total after it has been divided by nine.
1) England – 9.944pts
Could pay the price down the line when teams start being eliminated and those that are left see their points still being divided by nine, but for now England are streaking clear. The six bonus points awarded to each of the six Champions League teams are a huge help, but they are also picking up consistently solid results. There are only five teams left unbeaten in the Champions League, and three of those are Arsenal, Man City and Spurs.
All six of England’s representatives there look set for the knockout stages, with none currently lower than 12th, while Villa and Palace also look near certainties to progress from the Europa and Conference respectively. For all their nonsense, Forest ought to be fine in the end too.
Total points: 89.500
Total teams: Nine
Teams still active: Nine
League stage: Liverpool (UCL), Arsenal (UCL), Manchester City (UCL), Chelsea (UCL), Newcastle (UCL), Tottenham (UCL), Aston Villa (UEL), Nottingham Forest (UEL), Crystal Palace (UECL)
2) Germany – 8.857pts
Missed out on an extra place this year, but that does make each individual win worth that little bit more this time. And so far there have been plenty of wins.
Total points: 62.000
Total teams: Seven
Teams still active: Seven
League stage: Bayern Munich (UCL), Borussia Dortmund (UCL), Bayer Leverkusen (UCL), Eintracht Frankfurt (UCL), Freiburg (UEL), Stuttgart (UEL), Mainz (UECL)
3) Spain – 8.375pts
Finished second in the list last year to scoop an extra place and will be right in the mix again, but are in some danger of losing a couple of Champions League teams before the knockouts with both Athletic Club and Villarreal outside the 24-team cut-off at the halfway stage. But the big three should all be fine, as should all three of their Thursday night warriors.
Total points: 67.000pts
Total teams: Eight
Teams still active: Eight
League stage: Real Madrid (UCL), Barcelona (UCL), Atletico Madrid (UCL), Athletic Club (UCL), Villarreal (UCL), Celta Vigo (UEL), Real Betis (UEL), Rayo Vallecano (UECL)
4) Cyprus – 8.250pts
Total points: 33.000pts
Total teams: Four
Teams still active: Three
League stage: Pafos (UCL), Larnaca (UECL), Omonia (UECL)
Eliminated: Aris Limassol (UECL)
A stunning yet inevitably unsustainable effort. Pafos have a win and two draws in the Champions League league stage having made it all the way from the second qualifying round, while Larnaca are flying high at fourth in the current Conference table.
5) Italy – 8.142pts
The concern for Italy – who collected one of the bonus spots in the first year of their existence – is that they are already playing catch-up and at serious risk of losing half their Champions League teams before the knockouts with Napoli and Juventus currently around the cut line at 24th and 26th.
Total points: 57.000
Total teams: Seven
Teams still active: Seven
League stage: Inter (UCL), Atalanta (UCL), Napoli (UCL), Juventus (UCL), Roma (UEL), Bologna (UEL), Fiorentina (UECL)
6) Portugal – 8.000pts
Only having five teams but a couple of them being very decent means Portugal are prone to starting deceptively well here, with any wins your Sportings and Portos pick up being worth a chunky 0.4pts apiece. But will inevitably slide down the table, especially with Santa Clara failing to reach the Conference league stage and Benfica currently stinking up the Champions League.
Total points: 40.000
Total teams: Five
Teams still active: Four
League stage: Sporting (UCL), Benfica (UCL), Porto (UEL), Braga (UEL)
Eliminated: Santa Clara (UECL)
7) Poland – 7.875pts (4/4 teams active)
8) Denmark – 7.625pts (2/4)
9) France – 6.642pts (6/6)
10) Turkey – 6.200pts (3/5)