The additional Champions League spot awarded for performance in European competition has added an extra layer of intrigue to continental football.
The two best-performing nations across the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League each season are granted an extra place in the premier competition for the following season.
After the results in midweek, the Premier League is now virtually certain to earn that place for the 2025/26.
English clubs need just one more win in Europe to guarantee fifth Champions League place
Last year, those places went to Germany and Italy, helped along by Atalanta’s Europa League triumph and each of the two nations having finalists in two of the three competitions.
But that has arguably hurt both countries’ chances of holding onto their extra Champions League place because of the way performance is calculated.
We’ll spare you the sums in full – you can dig into that yourselves if you like – but in brief, UEFA works it out by averaging out the performance of each nation’s representatives based on match results and progress in the competition.
That means that Germany and Italy’s overall scores are each divided by eight this year where Spain and England’s are only divided by seven – because the Bundesliga and Serie A each have an extra team in Europe.
And with both countries only having three teams each left in Europe – two of whom could yet knock each other out in the Champions League, in Germany’s case – their chances of overhauling the Premier League are remote to nil.
Germany already cannot catch England, where Italy would need an unbelievably unlikely turn of events to go their way.
Serie A’s remaining clubs would essentially have to win every single game on their way to winning all three European trophies (Inter in the Champions League, Lazio in the Europa League and Fiorentina in the Conference League) while also hoping that all five remaining English sides lose close to all of their combined ten games.
In fact, the five remaining English clubs (Arsenal and Aston Villa in the Champions League, Tottenham and Manchester United in the Europa League, and Chelsea in the Conference League) need only win one more game between them to ensure England’s average performance coefficient ranks in the top two this season.
That would be the case even if the Italians completely and utterly dominated Europe from here.
Spain’s four remaining La Liga sides could still end up overtaking the Premier League from here.
But with two sides getting the extra Champions League places, that would be immaterial when it comes to getting the fifth place – as long as England are clear of Italy.
And if English sides go on to dominate the competition and win all three trophies, we could be looking at over half the Premier League competing in Europe next season.
