Past the Premier League
Leverkusen pushes the Bundesliga forward in the CL fight
April 12, 2024, 9:56 a.m
The Champions League is growing next season – and the Bundesliga has a fifth starting place. To do this, the German clubs have to do better than the English clubs in this European Cup season. Bayer Leverkusen achieved an elementary victory.
Germany is currently back on track in the race for the fifth Champions League starting place. Thanks to Bayer Leverkusen’s success in the direct duel against West Ham United, the Bundesliga initially pushed England back to third place in the European Football Union’s (UEFA) annual table, which is decisive for the allocation of starting places.
Germany now has 16,786 points for the 2023/24 season, but the Premier League is only just behind with 16,750 points. After the results from the Champions League, England was briefly overtaken during the week. But on Thursday, Liverpool (0:3 against Bergamo) and West Ham suffered defeats, only Aston Villa won (2:1 against Lille). Italy leads the table with a big lead.
At the end of the season, the top two nations in the rankings will receive an additional starting place for the coming season in the Champions League, when the premier class is increased from 32 to 36 teams as a result of a comprehensive reform. Every win for a team brings two points for the ranking, a draw one point and advancing to the next round another point.
These points are divided by the number of total starters in a country at the start of the season. Looking ahead to the rest of the season, England has slightly better prospects with five teams in the three UEFA competitions, Germany currently only has three starters left in Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen. Next week, Bayern (against Arsenal) and Leverkusen will play their return games in direct duels with English teams.
As things currently stand, BVB, fifth in the Bundesliga, would benefit from the additional Champions League place. This would increase the number of German European Cup starters to a total of eight next season. A fifth Champions League participant would not be a novelty for Germany; this already happened in the 2022/23 season. At that time, Eintracht Frankfurt had secured an additional premier class ticket with the Europa League title.