Neil Lennon has given his backing to the ‘Copenhagen Access Model’ to reform qualification to the group stage of the Champions League.
Over the last few seasons the four top performing leagues have been given four automatic group stage places while Celtic’s qualification route has grown from two rounds to four.
The European Leagues have been pushing for reform to give national champions a better chance of playing group stage matches but there has been little sign of progress as the richer clubs from the major leagues look for more guarantees and a greater slice of the prize money.
According to reports the Copenhagen proposal would rank the 79 teams in order with the top 20 gaining automatic entry to the group stage with the other sides entering the four qualifying rounds dependent on their own ranking over the last 10 years.
Celtic would then be ranked ahead of clubs like Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen. Using that formula this season Celtic would have entered the qualifying stage at the third qualifying round, reducing by half the current process.
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I think that the smaller countries have a far more difficult route into the Champions League than some of the other countries, or the richer countries.
I would echo that proposal from Copenhagen, the eastern European countries have made that point as well. So, there has to be a fairer chance for countries such as ourselves to get a crack at the Champions League.
We’ve got to play four qualifiers just to qualify, that’s eight games, that’s a quarter of the season which I think is a very difficult thing to ask of teams.
With the amount of games that we have already and the short close season you’re going into really important games straight away. We’ve been talking about this for a long time, I think our voices are beginning to be heard.
