Rangers' Automatic Champions League Hopes
An update following the Conference League Quarter Finals
As you may have read from me over the past few seasons, there was a fairly recent change in Champions League access rules that can benefit clubs like Rangers and Celtic, especially when the national coefficient is declining.
When the Champions League winner has already qualified for the next season’s competition through their own domestic league, an automatic slot is vacated. Previously, this would go to the nation ranked 11th in UEFA’s country coefficient ranking, but it was altered meaning any spare entry ticket would instead go to the highest ranked champion in Champions League qualifiers.
The word ‘champion’ is important - as it means a team with a high club coefficient (like Rangers) cannot benefit from this if they are not the champions of their domestic league. That’s because the Champions have to play qualifiers, and so the team that finished 2nd or lower cannot ‘leapfrog’ the team that finished 1st and proceed straight into the Champions League phase.
For Rangers this season - and potentially Celtic in future seasons - this means that no matter how low Scotland’s coefficient drops, there always remains a prospect of automatic Champions League qualification for the Scottish Champions. Scotland are currently ranked a horrifically low 18th in the country coefficient rankings, in case you had forgotten.
THIS SEASON - STILL A CHANCE
Bodø/Glimt finishing 2nd in the Norwegian Eliteserien was good news for Rangers. Due to the aforementioned “no leapfrogging” rule, it meant that even though Bodø overtook Rangers in UEFA’s club coefficient ranking (they are 32nd and Rangers are 37th) - it didn’t matter. They didn’t win the Norwegian league and so they are out of the running for any automatic Champions League place that may become available.
However, Bodø weren’t the only challengers to Rangers’ impressive club coefficient. As I told back in January, Olympiakos progression in the Champions League meant they had earned enough coefficient point to march past Rangers and into 34th in the rankings.
What that meant was that for Rangers to benefit from any vacated Champions League spot, not only did they have to win the Scottish Premiership, but they had to hope that Olympiakos didn’t win the Greek Super League. This looked ominous at the time, but after Olympiakos were beaten at home by former Hearts left back James Penrice’s AEK Athens last week, they slipped five points off the pace.
The Greek league has a relatively new split format where the league splits after 26 matches, and then the top four play each other home and away for a total of 32 matches. This means that with 27 matches played, there are now only five matches remaining for the title challenging group. Five points in five matches may seem a lot of ground to make up, but it is absolutely doable given Olympiakos still have to play home and away to both PAOK and Cyriel Dessers’ Panathinaikos, before ending the season away to current leaders AEK.
So Olympiakos are down, but not out yet. Keep an eye on them, but of course, they aren’t the only obstacle in Rangers’ way.
