A Quick and Complicated Guide to Europe
By: Jan | April 28th, 2009European football competitions used to be a straight forward affair. Two cups for each domestic league title and another one for the best of the rest all played out in a two-legged knockout format. Then came the G-14, breakaway league threats and UEFA’s response with a complicated mix of pre-group stage qualification knockout ties, group stages and post group stage knockout ties. Not to be outdone by an equally complicated system to determine which club from which league will enter the competitions at which stage.
I stripped as much complexity from all of this in the quick guide, and tried to not make too many mistakes in the complicated one.
The Quick Guide
Just make sure to finish first or second in the table. This guarantees you Champions League group stage football and a nice fat sum of money from the UEFA to sign new superstars or keep the old ones.
At the moment this privilege would go to Wolfsburg and Hertha, though with at least three more clubs hot on their heels they may also want to take a peek at the complicated guide…
The Complicated Guide
3rd Place – Champions League Qualification
A two-legged knock-out tie to decide whether your team plays in the Champions League or Europa League group stage. This is a small improvement over previous seasons, where teams losing this tie would still need to play an additional knockout tie to make it to the UEFA Cup group stage. So managers can at least budget with the Europa League group stage. The UEFA has yet to announce how much money they’ll pay to the clubs competing in their new competition. It’s presumably a tiny sum and compared to the Champions League it’s presumably a microscopic sum even.
4th Place – Europa League Play-Off
A two-legged knock-out tie to qualify for the Europa League group stage.
5th Place – Europa League 3rd Qualification Round
A two-legged knock-out tie to advance to the Europa League play-off round. UEFA could have probably just called the play-off round 4th qualification round instead, but that would have been too easy – and admittedly not a lot less confusing anyway.
Intertoto Cup – Dead and Buried
Finally.
DFB-Pokal Winner – Europa League Play-Off
There are some special cases connected to the DFB-Pokal. If the cup winner has finished the season in the top three (Champions League) the losing finalist will compete in the Europa League play-off round instead. If the losing finalist also finished in the top five the Europa League spot will go back to the league allowing the 6th placed team to compete. If the cup winner has finished 4th or 5th in the league the Europa League spot will go back to league as well. None of this will be the case this season though.
UEFA Cup Special Cases
The UEFA grants the UEFA Cup winner direct qualification for the new Europa League group stage but only in the case that the club couldn’t qualify for any European competition through the league. Ahead of this week’s semi-final this means that both Bremen and Hamburg have one more lifeline to get to Europe. In fact if you want to see as many Bundesliga clubs as possible in next seasons European competitions you should hope that a) Bremen/Hamburg win the cup b) Bremen/Hamburg don’t qualify through the league or DFB-Pokal.
UEFA Fair Play Ranking
An additional Europa League spot would be available to the fair play kings of the European leagues finishing in the top three of UEFA’s Fair Play ranking. But based on UEFA’s provisional ranking the Bundesliga won’t be one of them this season.
OK, I think everything should be as clear as mud now.
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Comments
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Any idea what happens if a non-Bundesliga club wins the DFB Pokal? I think they scrapped the bit about the cup final loser going in if the winner qualified by some other means, which had lead to non-first division sides in European competition (happened in Germany once, but I can’t remember who), but it seems like the same thing could occur with this setup.
Posted from
United States
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Alex, you might be thinking of FC Union Berlin, who got into the 2001-02 UEFA Cup after losing to Schalke in the Pokalfinale the prior spring. They had still been in the Regionalliga in 00-01, but were promoted to the 2.Liga for 01-02. Looks like they will be the inaugural 3.Liga champs and head back to the 2.Liga as well.
Posted from
United States -
Alex, the same rules apply for non-Bundesliga (I guess you mean 2. Bundesliga and lower?) clubs. They will qualify for Europe if they win the cup and they will qualify for Europe if they lose the final and the cup winner plays in the Champions League. Nothing changed there.
Luke, not to forget Alemannia Aachen in 2004. Aachen did pretty well in the cup – better than quite a few Bundesliga sides. They made it all the way past the group stage (beating OSC Lille and AEK Athens and drawing with Zenit St. Petersburg) and were then narrowly beaten by AZ Alkmaar in the round of 32.
Posted from
Germany -
PS: this rule with the losing finalist stems back to the times, when there was still the UEFA Cup Winners Cup. In case a team won the domestic double, it would have made little sense to send a lower ranked team from the league into the competition designed for the Cup Winners, so the next best thing, ie losing finalist, got the spot. I don’t know whether it’s up to the UEFA or the German FA to rethink that practice.
Posted from
Germany -
In Scotland the team that will be relegated this year is actually guaranteed European football as they somehow managed to make it to the Scottish Cup Final against Rangers who have already qualified for Europe. There is nothing more complicated than European Football qualifying systems.
Posted from
United States
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