Celtic will enter next season’s Champions League at the 3rd qualifying stage in the Champions route.
Neil Lennon’s side will have to get through two qualifying rounds to reach the group stages of the competition.
Crucially Celtic won’t have to face any club from the major nations such as England, Spain, Italy.
Celtic are likely to be seeded in both qualifying rounds with the points gained from this season’s Europa League providing a co-efficient of 32.728.
The only countries rated above Scotland in the Champions route are Belgium and Romania. The countries below Scotland are Switzerland, Israel, Czech Republic and Austria.
Cyprus will be ranked as the 20th strongest nation next season, Scotland will be 15th, with last season’s Cypriot champions Apoel making it all the way through to the last eight of this season’s event.
Apoel entered the competition at the second qualifying round and negotiated their way through three rounds before topping a group that included Zenit St Petersburg, Porto and Shakhtar Donetsk.
Scotland’s second Champions League entrant will come into the competition at the third qualifying round in the non-champions route which could see Motherwell drawn against the champions of Portugal, Russia or Turkey.
Three Scottish clubs will enter the qualifiers for the Europa League qualifiers.
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Motherwell (or whoever finishes second excluding the Hunz) will go into the non-champions section so won’t play the Champions of anywhere…
No Stephen, I think the non-champion entrants are drawn against the champions of other countries.
No, there are the champions section….ie. champions v champions…. then non champions section. That is why we got arsenal a few years ago, and exactly why we cannot get any of the big countries, because they qualify straight away…
Arsenal weren’t champions when we played them.
maybe you can make better sense of this than me Joe:
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/access2012.html
well, one way or another its good news I guess. HH 1NL
read yesterday that the govan rowing club have applied to the sfa play in europe next season despite not posting accounts before the 31st and not paying any tax last season , anyone got any update on this.
andy is right, only champions play champions and runners up play runners up ie arsenal v celtic neither of them champions.
Jebus, it’s time to take the oul head out of the sand.Jez black is black and Whyte is Whyte, try living in the real world.
what the hell you talking about pal? you been on the jesus juice??