In an exclusive investigation, Ibrox Noise’s Derek Cunningham explores the great European con of the co-efficient and how Rangers have defied the impossible. In part one, we introduce you to the basics.
Everywhere you go, all you hear is Scotland’s coefficient is improving. Few have any idea how this number is derived, and fewer still know the con that is being played on half of Europe.
There are actually three UEFA coefficients. One is for the National Team, which is used to determine how National Teams are divided for entry into various Competitions.
The club coefficient is used to rank individual teams for seedings in the UEFA Champions League, The UEFA Europa League and the controversial UEFA Conference League.
Then there is the Country Coefficient, which is the centre of what I call the Great Con. This is number that is used to determine how many teams a country can get in each competition.
Nowadays, for club teams the most important number is the Country Coefficient. If your country is higher up the pecking order, there is a greater chance of getting into one of the three competitions, and if your country manages to get high enough up the ladder, you might even find your team is given an automatic place in the Championship League. Woopee.
Looking at the rules the basic idea does really sound simple, and perhaps it even sounds fair. Who wants to see one-sided matches? If you want to participate in the top competitions simply win more games than you lose and you go up the rankings. Lose more and you go down.
Yes it sounds simple, and it sounds fair, but there is nothing fair about this system, and I will now show you why.
Teams at the bottom of the Country Coefficient naturally have to prove they are good enough to play at UEFA’s premier competitions, and to do that they have to navigate a series of qualifiers.
Again, this all sounds fair; but it only takes a cursory glance to know something is amiss, when teams from the Champions league are being parachuted into the secondary competition, and will soon be parachuted into a new tertiary competition. In fact, there is nothing fair about this point system, nor the parachute idea.
The problem is, the system is designed to make it almost impossible for teams at the bottom of this system to break into the money earning top-third of the coefficient table. It takes far too long for a country to move up the table, and if a team from a lower ranked country has a great talent in their ranks, they eventually get tired of playing four qualifiers in a row, just for the chance of playing in the group stages. At least in the old system every team had an equal chance, and the most important thing was every team had to play the same number of games.
However, in a moment of greed, the ruling body decided that the so-called “Champions” who lost were not losers. No, they had to be given a great big box of Kleenex tissues, and a chance to get back on the money trail, by being dropped into the Europa League. Oh, and because losing is so hard to take, they also let them play against the weakest teams to give them the best possible chance of getting through to the money-making group stages of the Europa league. The poor small team from a lower ranked country, would then be knocked out of the competition far earlier than they should, and their coefficient they are left to take home is perhaps a measly 1 point, and If they are really lucky, their country does not sink further down the rankings.
In part two, we further explore exactly the problems this presents and how it’s relevant to the Famous. Stay tuned.
how true you are i,n. all about money , corrupt to the core, w,a,t,p
It's our ball so we manipulate the system to ensure we don't lose
There should not be any parachute system, once you are out you ARE out! Everyone knows that the current system is designed to perpetuate the so called elite clubs' stranglehold on the European club competitions. European competitions are a joke, and are seen as such by the vast majority of supporters outside the "big five" leagues.
Definitely true and when the smaller teams win they do all in their power to make sure that they don't get too far in the competition.
The whole system is corrupt and rather than expanding the game which should be the aim of UEFA it pushes all the money towards the big 5 clubs and leaves the scraps to the rest. Result is that clubs like Rangers and Celtic have to really excel just to get some minor success while the big clubs get fed a diet of mediocre opposition to get them to the big money stages. The long term danger of this is that they strangle enthusiasm for the game. I already do not watch the Champions League as I'm fed up seeing the same teams every year. And even though we have benefited in the past I agree that once you out you are OUT. I think it was last season, or maybe the one before, that Celtic lost 5 of their 6 games (some quite heavily) in the Champions League but still dropped into the UEFA Cup. It's ridiculous!!!
Champions League…..the name itself makes a Eufa look corrupt when 4 from each of the so-called " big five " leagues get a place in it…the hypocrisy stinks from the top to bottom of Eufa …as long as they keep getting their backhanders from the " big five "…
We're being penalised for being a small country and having less teams, than the likes of England? Is that right?
It's a sham if a team that plays 4 qualifiers make it it to the competition proper they should be awarded a lot more than say Barcelona winning 4 home games
As you are performing better than uefa ranking say as teams like Barcelona are expected to win 4 ties the team that comes through 4 qualifiers are punching above there weight.i think a system were you get more points for winning a match if your ranked lower would be fairer as the so called big teams should collect more points as they are expected to win more and the more success the club gets as there ranking goes up the points the club gets per win goes down I think that would be a good system.
I have watched Rangers and Celtic in Europe for years, and it pains me to hope that Celtic do well so that our co-efficient actually improves. This year I heard a comemtator exclaim that Wolves had done great by getting through 3 qualifying round, but no mention that Rangers had to get through 4 qualifying rounds.
Actually if Rangers and Celtic have the same results for 5 years Scotland could be up to 10 in the Country Co-efficient, but this still only gives us 1 in the champions league and 1 in the qualifying rounds, not the 4 in the champians league like the big 4. Totally corrupt UEFA needs to be wound up.
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