UEFA ranking plays fate
How Union Berlin could slow down German football
By Stephan Uersfeld
November 7th, 2023, 3:55 p.m
The fourth matchday of the Champions League starts today. Union Berlin is still without a win. And that could become a problem for German football. Borussia Dortmund is also responsible. After all, it’s about an additional starting place in the Champions League.
In old football there was always that one moment when fans of all clubs suddenly had to become fans of the last remaining team in European competitions. “You have to think about the five-year rankings!” was the request and someone always dug through the databases and declared German football a failure. At that time it was about possible qualification places for the Champions League and therefore also for the other European competitions. But at the latest with the reform of the premier class for the 2018/2019 season, the compulsory order was lifted.
The five-year ranking, which was previously so important, was one for nerds and fatalists who feared that the Bundesliga would fall behind the French one-team league around the Qatari billion-dollar club Paris Saint-Germain. With the reform, there were now four fixed starting places for the four best nations in the five-year ranking and thanks to Bayern Munich and sufficient performances from other clubs such as Eintracht Frankfurt or Borussia Dortmund, they were always in the top 4.
That would hardly have been sufficient before the reform. Because fourth place only brought two fixed starting places, that was over. The story of the all-important five-year ranking was over. It became boring for those who didn’t want to agree with the compulsory order and would rather point the finger at other clubs.
Why every single game is important
There is now good news for exactly this clientele, who want to blame individual clubs for the downfall of German football. There is now good news for those who want to add “they are destroying German football” to Union Berlin’s disastrous series of defeats. Because this news is of course related to the new Champions League, which will start next year with 36 clubs for the first time and in the so-called Swiss format. This actually just means that there is no longer a group phase. It also says that there will be more games for the participating teams.
In this league of 36 teams, you play against eight other, not entirely randomly drawn, teams before something like a knockout phase begins (please read the details here from statistics fox Kevin Schulte). The clubs can of course also make extra money with these extra games in order to further expand their dominance in the national leagues and undermine the competition a little more.
Because 36 clubs and not just 32 are taking part in this new premier class, four more starting places are suddenly available and two of them go to the leagues best placed in the newly introduced one-year ranking. In official UEFA parlance this is called “Season association club coefficient rankings” and is based on the points that all clubs of the corresponding association have won in a given season in the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League. These are available for wins and draws in all phases of the competitions, there are bonus points for the Qualification for reaching the knockout phase of the premier class and much more. Then all the points of the participants from one country are added up and divided by the number of clubs participating from the respective association.
How the Bundesliga can bring eight clubs to Europe
If the Bundesliga really ends up among the two best nations at the end of the season, it will receive five starting places in the Champions League, two in the Europa League and one in the Conference League. Eight teams are then expected to compete in Europe. Almost half the league. Under very specific conditions, even more starting places are possible. But these conditions are so determined that they are unlikely to happen.
Andreas Skov Olsen opened a door for the Bundesliga with Brugge.
(Photo: IMAGO/Photo News)
What seems theoretical is important in every single game played by a German representative. Every early elimination of a Bundesliga team reduces a country’s points simply because the team no longer collects points. If, for example, Union Berlin leaves the group stage of the Champions League with zero points, they will only contribute the four points they have collected, which with seven participants amounts to just 0.571 points. The remaining clubs are still only allowed to contribute a seventh of the points they have won to the ranking.
The initial conditions are still almost perfect. This has primarily to do with the failure of CA Osasuna. The Spanish representative lost in the Conference League playoffs against FC Brugge and will only contribute 0.063 points to the Spanish result due to the elimination. Every Real Madrid win this season will be marred by this disaster. Because: Only twice in the last eight seasons has a country been able to secure a place in the top two nations when not all participating clubs reached the group stage. Both times, in the 2015/2016 and 2018/2019 seasons, it was the Premier League, which was already ahead of the competition.
What the current status is
Things still look okay for the Bundesliga this season. With 6,357 points collected so far, German football is in fourth place. Of the top leagues, only Italy’s Serie A can boast a better score with 6,571 points. But the giants from the English Premier League (6.25 points) and the heavyweights from Spain’s La Liga (6.187), although already decimated in Spain’s case, are just waiting for the Bundesliga teams to make mistakes. Thanks to good results in the qualifying competitions, Belgium’s quintet around Champions League participants Royal Antwerp is currently ahead of the top 5 leagues with 7.4 points. Turkey got off to a lightning start at the top. After the elimination of Adana Demirspor they are only three of the four teams in the race, but the Istanbul trio Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe and Besiktas have collected a large part of the 8.75 points so far.
A look at the last few years reveals that everything could lead to a top result for Turkey, but they are unlikely to be rewarded with a place in the new Champions League. In the last seven seasons, the places were allocated quite easily anyway. England and Spain grabbed 11 of the 14 possible top positions, with Italy last year, the Netherlands the year before and the Bundesliga in the 2019/2020 pandemic season, only three leagues were able to break through the dominance of the giant leagues. Things were particularly close in August 2020. Bayern Munich had reached the final of the Champions League and only the triumph sealed by the brilliant Kingsley Coman allowed Germany to overtake England. It was the only year in which the Premier League would have been denied another place in the premier class.
The Bundesliga scored 18,714 points during the season, a value that was never reached afterwards and is usually not enough. And that’s why every win by a Bundesliga team counts these days. Does Union Berlin not think about the one-year ranking at all? This also applies to Borussia Dortmund, who received the delivery order today in the Champions League against Newcastle United. Points for the Bundesliga are not points for the Premier League in this game.