Co-efficient Corner: How this week’s UEFA Club Competition draws work

With the eyes of the football world focused largely across the Atlantic (and a lot of fans in Europe contending with the early stages of sleep deprivation), fans of clubs across Europe will take a glance back towards Nyon this week as the draws for the early qualifying rounds of UEFA’s club competitions are held. Let’s take a look at some of the finer details, and what clubs from Britain and Ireland in particular will be looking out for.

One good thing to note this season: readers who followed this series last year will remember my exasperated reports on how Multi-Club Ownership rules were affecting proceedings, and while their have been licensing issues in both the men’s and women’s game, these particular rules don’t appear to have tripped anyone up this time.

Tuesday: Men’s Competition First Qualifying Rounds

This is now a familiar routine: draws are conducted one round ahead, so the First and Second Qualifying Round draws are carried out within a day of each other, the Third Qualifying Round is drawn after the First Qualifying Round but before the Second, and the Play-offs are drawn after the Second Qualifying Round but before the Third. But today we’ll start at the beginning: the First Qualifying Round, where there’s interest for teams from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Don’t forget as well that during the Qualifying Rounds the Club and Country Co-efficient points are calculated differently, with Country Points being allocated according to match results (one point for a win, 0.5 points for a draw, 0 for a loss) and Club Points being allocated according to the stage where a team is eliminated. And because clubs drop down the competitions during the qualifiers and are only locked into a tournament if they enter the League Stage, it’s only possible to be knocked out altogether from the Conference League.

Champions League

We’ll start as always with UEFA’s premier competition, the Champions League. 28 teams are vying for a spot in the Second Qualifying Round, and 14 of them will be successful, with seedings allocated according to team’s Club Co-efficient at the end of last season.

I’d expect the teams to be divided into groups before the draw so as to limit the number of potential clubs a team can face and limit how far they’ll have to travel at this stage. Certainly, there’s no procedural reason to keep clubs in separate groups as no draw conditions apply: there’s only one team per country in this stage, and none of the political clashes are possible.

From a local perspective, 2025 League of Ireland Champions Shamrock Rovers are the highest ranked team in the draw, and will be seeded, along with NIFL Champions Larne and Cymru Premier Champions The New Saints. But I don’t imagine the clubs will be fooled by the co-efficients as there are some serious opponents lurking in the unseeded pot. I’d be particularly wary of Levski Sofia, Sabah and Győr.

There’s one last step to this draw: the Access List provides for 32 teams in this round and for losing teams to drop into the Conference League, so with the Access List being rebalanced to account for Russia’s ongoing suspension and the winners of last season’s Champions League also winning Ligue 1, the Conference League Champions Path will be two teams short, and its structure only works if eight teams make it to the Third Qualifying Round. So to make that happen, once the Champions League First Qualifying Round ties have been drawn, a further draw will be held to decide which ties will have “lucky losers”, whose losing teams still drop down into the Conference League, but get a Bye into the Third Qualifying Round.

From a co-efficient perspective, teams in this draw are assured of at least 1.500 points, as the Conference League Second Qualifying Round is the worst-case scenario. For the four clubs drawn into “lucky loser” ties, their minimum co-efficient will increase to 2.000 points — the number of points awarded for reaching the Conference League Third Qualifying Round.

Europa League

Next comes the Europa League, and anyone sniffing at this stage of European competition might want to take a look at the seeded teams in this draw: Ferencváros, Qarabağ, Sheriff Tiraspol, Dynamo Kyiv, Hajduk Split and CSKA Sofia make for a terrifying set of opponents.

Into this arena step League of Ireland Runners-up Derry City, who being unseeded, might not entertain many hopes of progressing in the Europa League, but who can resist a glamour tie?

As always, there’s the possibility of teams being divided into groups before the draw, but with no draw conditions being an issue and the geographic spread of the teams in the Seeded Pot at least seeming much of a muchness (particularly from Vestri’s perspective), there’s the option to keep things simple.

Like in the Champions League, Europa League First Qualifying Round losing teams drop into the Conference League, so all twelve teams have 1.500 points in the bag.

Conference League

This might be the lowest-ranked competition of the three, but at this stage, it’s also the biggest, with no fewer than 52 teams involved. The teams will definitely be sorted into groups ahead of time and to prevent the UEFA officials getting a repetitive strain injury, each team will be allocated a number in their respective group, and those numbers will be drawn out instead of an individual team, so multiple ties will be drawn out at once.

From a local perspective, NIFL Play-off Winners Linfield are seeded.

It’s less good news for League of Ireland representatives Bohemians, Linfield’s Northern Irish compatriots Glentoran, and all three Welsh entrants Connah’s Quay Nomads, Penybont and Caernarfon Town. They’ll all be unseeded.

From a co-efficient perspective, all the teams entering this draw are guaranteed the minimum number of points of any entrant this season: 1.000.

Wednesday: Men’s Competition Second Qualifying Rounds

This is where things start getting a little more complex as the Champions and Conference League qualifiers branch into paths. Meanwhile, we once again face the conundrum of ties being drawn before the previous around has taken place, and it’s resolved in the usual way: with the assumption that the team with the higher co-efficient in the previous round wins their tie and advances, with the team with the lower co-efficient dropping down to (or out of) the Conference League.

This is also the point where Scottish teams start entering the hat, along with the remaining teams from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Champions League

As Tuesday’s draw throws up the possibility of prohibited clashes being drawn — Kosovo’s Drita and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Borac Banja Luka still can’t face each other, but if Ararat-Armenia and Sabah cause upsets in the First Qualifying Round, that opens up the risk of an Armenia v Azerbaijan tie in the Second — the teams will definitely be divided into groups ahead of Wednesday’s draw.

In the Champions’ Path, Shamrock Rovers will once again be seeded. Larne and The New Saints won’t be so lucky, but there are some big-name opponents waiting for them in the Seeded pot.

The League Path won’t be divided into groups as there are only four teams in it to begin with and as usual they’re seeded according to co-efficient.

This is where Heart of Midlothian, SPFL Runners-up, enter. They’ll be unseeded and will face one of two spectacularly tricky opponents, but will thank their lucky stars that the Access List was rebalanced: had Aston Villa not come fourth in the Premier League, the Jambos’ potential opponents would have been tougher still.

From a co-efficient perspective, teams reaching this stage drop into the Europa League if they lose their ties, as opposed to dropping straight into the Conference League. That means that clubs’ worst-case scenario is reaching the Conference League Play-offs, and 2.500 points.

Europa League

If the First Qualifying Round line-up looked intimidating, the line-up of seeded teams in the Second Qualifying Round is terrifying!

No British or Irish teams enter the Europa League at this stage, but with Derry City unseeded in the First Qualifying Round, they’ll have one eye on this one: if they shock Ferencváros or Qarabağ in QR1, they’ll take their seeded spot in this draw. Otherwise, they’ll be unseeded again.

As you might expect, losing teams drop into the Conference League Third Qualifying Round, so any team playing in this round is sure of 2.000 points this season.

Conference League

Things get fiddly again here, and this is the biggest round of the entire UEFA club competition structure: there are 86 teams in the draw for the Main Path, and there will 12 teams in the draw for the Champions’ Path. That’s a total of 98 teams being drawn into 49 ties.

We’ll start with the Champions’ Path, where the seedings aren’t yet clear as we won’t know until after Tuesday’s Champions League First Qualifying Round draw who gets the byes in this competition. But with those seeding’s being determined by the unseeded teams in Tuesday’s draw, we have some idea.

So we know who will definitely be seeded if they still have to play in the Second Qualifying Round.

There are then two teams who are in limbo, and will need the outcome of the “lucky loser” draw to work out whether they’ll be seeded or not if they don’t skip this round.

That leaves the teams who’ll be unseeded.

We then move on to the Main Path draw, which, like the First Qualifying Round, will see teams divided into groups beforehand, with numbers allocated to them, and it’s those numbers that will be drawn out instead of individual clubs.

While it’s fashionable for some, particularly in England, to sneer at the Conference League, just take a look at some of the teams entering this round: Sporting Braga, Ajax and Copenhagen to name but three. The standard of this competition gets higher every year and anyone suggesting UEFA may as well save time by engraving Brighton’s name on the trophy now is doing the tournament a disservice. Luckily, Hibernian, entering the competition at this stage after their fifth-place finish in the SPFL are seeded, as are the winner of Linfield’s First Qualifying Round tie.

Motherwell may well have finished above Hibs in the SPFL but it’s the Hibees who have a better European record over the last five years, and that gap sees Well fall short of the co-efficient points needed for a place in the Seeded pot in this draw. Also entering proceedings at this stage as unseeded teams are the League of Ireland’s Shelbourne (who could find themselves drawn against Linfield again) and Irish Cup Winners Coleraine. They’ll be joined by Derry City, or to be precise, the losers of the Europa League tie involving them.

From a co-efficient perspective, any team playing a tie in this round is guaranteed 1.500 points.

Thursday: Women’s Champions League First and Second Qualifying Rounds

For years now I’ve been making a point of referring to the men’s club competitions as exactly that, but with the women’s game growing, failure to follow the women’s club competitions is an oversight I’ve decided to correct this season. I’m looking forward to learning more about the Women’s Champions League and Europa Cup, and the teams playing in them, as I go!

So I’ll start with a few basics to understand at this point in the process for followers who aren’t that familiar with these tournaments. Firstly, the co-efficient points: in the qualifying rounds, these work in a similar way to how they operate in the men’s game, with match points adding up towards the Country Co-efficient (1 point for a win, 0.5 points for a draw, 0 for a loss), and the outcome of Qualifying Round ties determining the Club Co-efficient. However, unlike in the men’s game, it’s entirely possible for teams in the Women’s Champions League to be knocked out of European competition altogether without dropping down into the Europa Cup. That means that the teams who do drop down earn points for how they’ve done in the Champions League, then further points based on how they did in the Europa Cup. I’ll come onto that as we go.

Then there’s the structure of these first two rounds. Rather than teams being drawn in two-legged ties against a single opponent, the format will look familiar to followers who remember the Champions’ League Preliminary Round in the pre-2004 Men’s structure: one of the teams hosted a mini knockout tournament, with the winner advancing. In the Women’s Champions League Qualifiers, clubs are drawn into mini-tournaments consisting of three or four teams, with the winners progressing to the next round. The Third Qualifying Round, and the Europa Cup qualifiers, are two-legged ties.

Finally, the draw timings: as in the Men’s Competitions, the first two Qualifying Rounds are drawn before a ball has been kicked, but the draws happen within a couple of hours within each other rather than on subsequent days. However, the draws for the Third Qualifying Round and for the First Qualifying Round of the Europa Cup don’t happen until after the Champions League Second Qualifying Round is complete. And the draw for the Europa Cup Second Qualifying Round doesn’t happen until after those ties have been played.

In practice, this means that the seedings for the UWCL Champions League Second Qualifying Round are based on the assumption that the teams with the highest co-efficient in each First Qualifying Round mini-tournament are the ones who advance. But no such assumption needs to be made for the later rounds, as we know the identity of every team in the draw.

First Qualifying Round Draw

We start at the beginning, with the First Qualifying Round. There will be five mini-tournaments formed but with 19 teams taking part, only four of them will have four teams (they’ll be drawn first) and the remaining one will only have three. This will have a bearing on how the draw works.

The next complication (for those of us new to this format) is that although there are three or four teams in each mini-tournament, there are only two pots: a seeded pot consisting of the twelve highest-ranked teams, and an unseeded pot with the remaining eight. What this means is that it’s possible for the two highest-ranked teams to be drawn in the same mini-tournament as opposed to being kept apart!

So in this week’s Draw, Northern Irish Champions Glentoran and Republic of Ireland Champions Athlone Town will be seeded; Adran Premier Champions Wrexham, who play in the Welsh Pyramid in the Women’s Game, will not.

So how does the draw work? Firstly, the 10 seeded teams are drawn into a mini-tournament (Pyunik and Neftchi Baku will be kept apart). Then the unseeded teams are drawn: the first eight to be drawn out will go into the four-team mini-tournaments, they’ll each play a seeded team in the semi-final where the winners advancing to the final and the losers entering a third-place play-off.

This is the fiddly bit: the remaining team is drawn into the three-team mini-tournament, where they’ll be drawn against the seeded team with the lowest co-efficient in the semi-final. The team with the higher co-efficient will receive a bye to the final.

One last thing to note: it’s win or bust. In other words, teams who win their mini-tournament advance to the Second Qualifying Round, and teams who don’t are knocked out of European Competition altogether for this season. There are no second chances.

This has an impact on Co-efficient points: teams who come fourth in their mini-tournament get 0.500 club points; third-placed teams get 1.000 points, runners-up get 1.500. So every team in Thursday’s draw has a minimum of 0.500 points already, but teams drawn into three-team mini-tournaments will see their minimum increase to 1.000.

Second Qualifying Round Draw

Now to the Second Qualifying Round Draw. Like it’s men’s counterpart, this one splits into a Champions Path and a League Path, both with mini-tournaments.

In the Champions Path there are seven mini-tournaments, which means there are 14 seeded teams, and none of the teams advancing from the First Qualifying Round have a co-efficient high enough to be seeded in this draw.

Nor do SWPL Champions Heart of Midlothian, who join the competition at this stage.

In the League Path, there are 4 mini-tournaments and so 8 seeded teams. Rangers will be unseeded and hoping for a kind draw.

In this round, there is an escape route into the Europa Cup, but that depends on where teams place.

So any team to reach this stage has a minimum of 2.000 club points: and the team coming fourth in their mini-tournament gets knocked out altogether and is awarded that total.

Third-placed teams get 1.000 points, which sounds paradoxical, but they drop into the Europa Cup First Qualifying Round, where they’ll pick up an extra 1.500 points for a minimum total of 2.500. Mini-tournament runners-up get 1.500 points for their position but then go straight into the Europa Cup Second Qualifying Round for an extra 2.000 points on top of that and a minimum total of 3.500.

And that’s where we stand for the week ahead. I’ll post an update after tomorrow’s draws with the outcome and a reminder of Wednesday’s seedings…