UEFA rankings: which countries will get a fifth team in the 2024/25 Champions League?

Another week of European club comPetition has come and gone, meaning we are closer to knowing which countries and leagues will get a fifth place in next season’s “new and improved” Champions League. Here’s how things stand after the latest bout of action in the UCL, Europa League and Europa Conference League.

How will the Champions League change in 2024/25?

The Champions League revamp will see 36 teams take part in the competition instead of the current 32. That means the competition will make more money from a greater number of games (189, currently 125), which will see the continent’s ‘top’ teams play each other more often, including in the group stage.

The group stage will be where the main difference lies compared to current format. Instead of teams being drawn into eight groups of four and playing six group games, they will instead take part in eight matches and go into one giant table (that’s going to be a lot of scrolling on your results app of choice), with goal difference the first tie-breaker for teams finishing level on points.

The competition will deploy the ‘Swiss model’, commonly used in chess tournaments, which means not every team in the ‘league’ will play each other.

Instead, the 36 clubs will be divided into four pots of nine, based on UEFA’s five-year club coefficient (basically how each club has performed in European comPetition in the last five years).

Each team will be drawn to face two clubs from each pot, including their own, which should ensure their eight group-stage matches are of similar difficulty on the whole. As is the case now, two teams from the same country cannot be drawn against other.

Who will the four extra group stages places go to?

From next season onwards, there will be four extra places in the group stage.

The first will go to the team that finished third in the fifth-ranked country in UEFA’s association coefficient (the fifth ‘best’ league in Europe, in simple terms) at the end of the 2022-23 season. As the time of writing, that’s France’s Ligue 1.

One extra team will qualify for the group stage from the champions’ qualifying path, which is generally for the champions from leagues not ranked in the top 10 in the association coefficient. Five ‘champion’ clubs will qualify from this path instead of the current four.

The race for the fifth Champions League place

The remaining two places will go to teams from the two countries that have the highest coefficient score during the previous season.

To calculate that, it isn’t just the Champions League that’s taken into consideration, but also the Europa League and Europa Conference League. All three competitions carry the same importance when it comes to coefficient points in individual matches (two for a win, one for a draw, zero for a defeat), so performing well in the “lesser” tournaments is just as crucial.

There is, however, a small difference when it comes to bonus points awarded in the respective competitions.

Which countries are in contention for the fifth UCL spot?

After the first legs of the quarter-finals in the three competitions, Serie A and the Bundesliga occupy the top two places, with Italy likely to be far enough of third (England’s Premier League) to get a fifth UCL place.

The main battle for the fifth UCL spot is between the Bundesliga and the Premier League as it stands. With five English teams still picking up points compared to only three from Germany, there is still a realistic chance the two could switch places.

Bayer Leverkusen look to be a strong position to knock West Ham out of the Europa League after a 2-0 first-leg win in Germany, so the Arsenal - Bayern Munich Champions League tie (2-2 after the first leg in London) could prove crucial when it comes to deciding which of the two countries gets an extra place in next season’s tournament.