How Europa League can help save England's fourth Champions League spot
The group stages of this season’s Champions League was done and dusted on Wednesday night, which saw Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea qualify to the knockout stages of Europe’s premier club competition. However, Manchester United lost at Wolfsburg which saw them get relegated to the Europa League.
Meanwhile, Liverpool and Tottenham made it to the round-of-32 as group toppers as the group stages of the Europa League came to an end on Thursday night. The Red Devils will now join the two in the knockout stages of the competition.
The performance of the English teams at Europe’s biggest stage in the past few years has been below par to say the least. Chelsea won the Champions League in 2011-12 and then reached the semifinals of the competition in 2013-14.
Barring that, no English team was able to make it through to the quarterfinals of the mega event since Manchester United reached the final in the 2010/11 edition.
The story in the Europa league is far more alarming. Since 2010-11, the team from Stamford Bridge are the only side to have reached the semifinals of Europe’s second tier competition.
The big worry for the Premier League teams is that the Serie A clubs could snatch their fourth direct qualification spot in the Champions League if Italy surpasses England in UEFA’s coefficient standings. Though, barring Juventus’ last season’s run to the finals, Italian teams have fared worse than their English counterparts in the Champions league.
Since 2003, this was the just the second time when an Italian team outran the English teams in the tournament, first being Inter Milan’s triumph in 2010. On the contrary, their Europa league performances have given them a big boost in the coefficient scores. Since 2013, three Serie A teams have reached the semifinals of the Europa league.
Italy are hot on the heels of England in UEFA coefficient standings
Notably, each team gets the same number of points for a win in both the competitions, one point for a win in the playoff and qualifying rounds and two points for a win in the rest of the matches. A draw will gain the teams one point, and half a point in the qualifying and play-off stages.
Qualification for the round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final and final of the Champions League will gain the teams a bonus one point and for the Europa League, playing in the quarter-final, semi-final and final will get teams an extra point. The total points each country collects is then divided by the number of teams playing in Europe from their respective leagues and then added to the score of the previous four years.
Spain and Germany currently occupy the first two positions of the UEFA coefficient standings, with England in third and Italy a close four with the difference between the two nations being just 3.095 points. Juventus playing in the final last year earned Italy four points more than what the English teams managed.
This highlights how narrow the difference is between them on the coefficient table.
So, in order to save the English Premier League’s fourth spot in the 2017-18 edition of the Champions League, the PL clubs playing in the Europa League must try to up the ante in the tournament. However, England have already secured a fourth direct qualification spot for the Champions League 2016-17, which can not be altered now.
| Rank | Country | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | Total |
| 1. | Spain | 20.857 | 17.714 | 23.000 | 20.214 | 10.071 | 91.856 |
| 2. | Germany | 15.250 | 17.928 | 14.714 | 15.857 | 8.857 | 72.606 |
| 3. | England | 15.250 | 16.428 | 16.785 | 13.571 | 7.625 | 69.659 |
| 4. | Italy | 11.357 | 14.416 | 14.166 | 19.00 | 7.666 | 66.605 |