New UEFA proposals for the Champions League will cut out one round of qualifiers the next time Celtic play in the competition.
Firm proposals were announced by UEFA yesterday that would give club’s their own coefficient rather than their national rating for the stage that they enter at.
This season the champions of Scotland entered the second qualifying round due to a national co-efficient of 18.175 which is joint 23rd in the Ranking table.
Under the new proposals Celtic’s individual co-efficient of 40.46 would see them enter the competition at the third qualifying round cutting out the Gibraltar/Iceland stage of the process.
The new plans would be a death knell for any new Scottish club’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League. Rather than piggy-back onto the co-efficient of clubs that pay Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to the detriment of their team a new club would get 20% of the national co-efficient which stands at 3.635. That ranking would put a new club on a par with the champions of Malta or Estonia!
Yesterday the UEFA website announced: “A new system for the club coefficients: clubs are judged on their own records (deletion of the country share for individual club coefficient unless that coefficient is lower than 20% of the association’s coefficient).
“Historical success in the competition will also be acknowledged in coefficient calculation (points for previous European titles with a weighted system for UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League titles).”
The separate Champions route will remain open to Celtic although with 16 direct places going to clubs in the top four leagues the Champions route is likely to involve clubs from stronger nations than at present.
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