The UEFA coefficient rankings look set to see Scotland lose their automatic Champions League spot from 2025 after their coefficient was overtaken on Thursday.
While this season’s Scottish Premiership winner is guaranteed a Champions League group-stage spot and big prize money – at least £30m – that will now be lost for whoever finishes top of the table in 2024/25.
Following Plzen’s 0-0 draw with Fiorentina in the Czech Republic on Thursday, Scotland now rank outside the top 10 countries in UEFA’s co-efficient standings.
Instead, the Scottish title winner will face one qualification round, and the club finishing second will need to battle through three qualifiers to reach the group stage.
The coefficient formula factors each association’s performances in the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League over the past five seasons – including the current campaign.
Before Rangers’ defeat to Benfica, Celtic were knocked out of the Champions League and Aberdeen were eliminated from the Europa Conference League, while Hearts and Hibernian lost out in their qualifiers.
The final season rankings always apply to competition allocations for the season after next, so the final coefficient rankings this term will determine allocations for the competitions to start in 2025/26.
Safety net for Rangers?
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Philippe Clement reacted to Rangers’ Europa League elimination to Benfica and said everyone associated with the club should be proud
There is one caveat, however. Should Rangers win the league next season, then it is likely they could still secure group-stage Champions League football due to the club’s own coefficient ranking.
It would rely on the winner of the Champions League qualifying for the next season’s tournament through their league position – but were that to happen, Rangers would secure an extra spot under the new tournament format due to being the highest-ranked champion in qualifying.
Rangers’ impressive involvement in recent seasons – which included a run to the Europa League final in 2022 – means the club are 25th in the rankings. However, if Celtic were to win the league next season, they would not benefit from this safety net, as they are much further down in the UEFA rankings which are based on results over the past five seasons.
It gets a lot tougher after that…
Scotland’s position of 11th is in large part down to to their impressive 2019/20 results, which generated 9.75 points after the Old Firm progressed into the Europa League knockout stages. However, that season will be wiped from the equation at the end of this campaign.
As it stands, Scotland will start next season in 16th spot, meaning only one Scottish club would be able to take part in the Champions League for the 2026/27 campaign. They would enter at the second qualifying round, instead of earning an automatic group-stage spot and qualifying spot.
One Scottish side would qualify for the Europa League, entering at the first qualifying round (currently one team enters the play-off and another the second qualifying round).
Two Scottish teams would qualify for the Europa Conference League, both entering at the second qualifying round.
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