Two leagues will be rewarded with extra places in next season’s Champions League as part of the 36-team competition revamp — but who will benefit?
Two leagues will be rewarded with an extra place in next season’s Champions League based on performance in Europe this season, all part of the revamp to expand it to a 36-team competition — but who is likely to benefit?
With the knockout stages of the Champions League (UCL), Europa League (UEL) and Europa Conference League (UECL) under way, we’re starting to get a clearer picture of which leagues could get the two places.
That said, we’re still a long way from finding out who is going to get an extra spot — and it could yet go down to the wire.
This article will be updated throughout the season to track the race for the extra spots.
It’s about the best average coefficient of all teams taking part in Europe for each country. The two leagues with the best score get an extra place.
Each win is worth two coefficient points, a draw gets you one, and you get nothing for a defeat.
There are also bonus points for getting to certain stages, which help give extra prominence to those teams who do well in the higher-profile competitions.
Champions League bonus points
4 – Group stage participation
5 – Round of 16
1 – QF, SF, final
Europa League bonus points
4 – Group winners
2 – Group runners-up
1 – Round of 16, QF, SF, final
Europa Conference League bonus points
2 – Group winners
1 – Group runners-up
1 – SF, final
The points gained by all clubs are added together, and that total score is divided by the number of clubs a country has in Europe in the season. That gives the coefficient average.
For example, if a country has 35 coefficient points and seven teams in Europe, its score is 5.00 for the table (35 / 7 = 5.00.)
No, the coefficient system is designed to assess the overall strength of leagues. Wins are the same in all competitions, otherwise it would be impossible for those leagues with few or no teams in the UCL group stage to move up the coefficient ranking.
The bonus points serve two purposes: firstly, to give weight to the strength of the competitions on a sliding scale, and second to provide points to those teams taking part in the UCL who might get few positive results.
In fact, it could be argued that it’s better for leagues to have some teams drop down into the UEL for the knockout rounds. Bonus points might be lower in the UEL, but each two-legged tie has five points up for grabs (four for the result and one for progressing to the next round). If a team stays in the UCL, they might not get past the round of 16 and have little chance of adding to the country’s coefficient through wins.
If we look back at the previous five seasons, England and Spain take seven of the 10 slots, with Italy and Germany one each. Only in 2021-22 did one of the countries with fewer than four teams in the Champions League (the Netherlands) finish in the top two of average coefficient.
So yes, history tells us that it’s highly likely two of the top leagues will have five places in next season’s Champions League.
2022-23: England and Italy
2021-22: England and the Netherlands
2020-21: England and Spain
2019-20: Spain and Germany
2018-19: England and Spain
This is the top 10 as of Feb. 20.
1. Italy, 15.000
2. Germany, 14.071
3. England, 13.875
4. Spain, 12.937
5. France, 12.250
6. Czechia, 12.000
7. Belgium, 11.800
8. Turkey, 11.000
9. Netherlands, 9.200
10. Denmark, 8.500
There’s barely anything between Italy, England and Germany while Spain certainly cannot be ruled out.
Could Czechia or Belgium produce a shock and gatecrash the top two? And we need to talk about France…
But one thing is for sure, the final table will not look the same at the end of the table. Any country that has multiple teams run deep is likely to get a top-two slot.
A quirk of the coefficient system is that results in the knockout playoff round, essentially the round of 32, of the UEL and UECL add points to the national association score, but not a club’s. So results count in the races to be one of the two top leagues.
While there are higher bonus points for winning a group compared to finishing second, the runners-up are capable of adding more points overall than the group winners by advancing from the knockout playoff round.
For instance, the UEL group winners get four bonus points, and the runners-up get two bonus points. But the runners-up play in the knockout playoff round with an additional four points available through the results of each leg, if they win both matches.
E.G. West Ham got four points for winning their UEL group, with SC Freiburg getting two for being second. If Freiburg were to win both legs in the knockout playoff round, the total add to the coefficient could be six points compared to West Ham’s four.
It means leagues with multiple clubs in the knockout playoff round can add to their score. Remember, we need to talk about France …
The bad news for the Premier League? All its teams in the UEL and UECL won their group, which means the league cannot pick up any points from those competitions in February. England will likely be in a worse position as we move into March.
A league needs to keep as many teams as possible still active deep into the knockout rounds. The fewer teams in European competition, the less chance there is to score coefficient points to compete for the top two.
Results will be harder to come by with the fixtures becoming increasingly difficult.
It’s even more important for England and Spain, who started with eight teams in Europe; each win is worth slightly less to the coefficient (as the score is divided by eight rather than seven for Germany and Italy.)
Internazionale, Lazio and Napoli are in the UCL round of 16, but the draw didn’t look too promising for the trio, having been unseeded. While Lazio won 1-0 at home to Bayern Munich in the first leg, the Bundesliga side will still be favourites to go through on home turf.
