Guest Post: Breaking Down CL Coefficients

(Cue theme song)

Eladio returns to break down the CL numbers for us, explaining all this coefficient business as it pertains to the 2010/11 tournament…

In the purgatory between the World Cup and August 14 (no, Stretford End/Autoglass, The Community Shield doesn’t count), one must find something to pass the time.

For me, I’ve never been interested in the never-ending transfer babble or the meaningless club tours with endless substitutions.

However—and I don’t know how this happened—digging through match results to see if some small team from Andorra beat some smaller team from San Marino makes me wet in anticipation for the coming Champions League season.

(Or that could just be the sweltering heat of the east coast this summer, dripping sweat down my ass cheeks. Actually, I hope it’s the latter.)

Last year some psychotic guest writer penned 2,000+ words on the new changes to the UEFA qualifying rules. The main gist of that post, in my mind anyway, was that the new rules were going to make it more difficult for non-group stage qualifiers from the better leagues in Europe to make it to the group stage, as the last round of qualifying they have to go through includes a tougher potential opponent.

The apocalypse was avoided in 2009, although (based on coefficient seeding) there were 2 upsets in the Non-Champions path. Both Sporting and Panathinaikos were seeded and had higher coefficient rankings to their opposition, but lost their place in the group stages to Fiorentina and Atletico Madrid, respectively. (Hard to call either a real upset.)

In the other 3 playoff games, Arsenal proved that Scottish football is complete crap (although according to the Daily Mail they only beat Celtic because of that diving bastard Eduardo), Lyon started their run to the semifinals by taking care of Anderlecht, and Stuttgart squeaked by the plucky Romanians from Timisoara.

I would expect that this year would be more of the same, but that’s not what this post is about. I mentioned the UEFA coefficients above, and I think most pay little mind to these seemingly random numbers that UEFA posts along with the teams. Much like the FIFA World Rankings, the UEFA coefficients seem to be calculated by some algorithm that takes into account the team’s recent success (or failure) in Europe; their country’s leagues results; and the Platini Fudge Factor that ensures English teams are screwed and Italian teams are overrated.

As you can see from the list of coefficients for all participating teams in the 2010-11 UEFA CL, they range from a high of 136.951 for Barcelona to a low of 0.249 for AS Jeunesse Esch of Luxembourg. Even though a team’s players and coaching staff can change dramatically from year-to-year, utilizing past performances as a way of comparing a club’s relative worth against the other clubs could be seen as an adequate way of coming up with a ranking.

It could also be considered asinine as well, seeing that Sevilla has a coefficient 24 points higher than Real Madrid, but I’d argue that Sevilla’s roster doesn’t contain Cristiano Ronaldo, so it all comes out even in the end.

The coefficients are important, however, specifically when determining seeding for the different pots for the group stage draw. When looking over the coefficient list, a few things popped out at me:

1) Unless UEFA changes their seeding procedure, Real Madrid is guaranteed a 2nd pot placement in the draw. They are currently 9th in the coefficient rankings, and will probably end up to be 10th if either Sevilla or Werder Bremen qualify through the last playoff round. If either (or both) happens, Olympique Lyonnais will also fall to the 2nd pot as both Sevilla and Werder Bremen’s coefficients are higher than Lyon’s.

2) Tottenham will be seeded for their Playoff Round qualifier. Their coefficient will be no worse than 4th of the 10 teams that make it to the Playoff Round, so they are guaranteed to face one of the following teams (in reverse order of coefficient strength):  KAA Gent (BEL); BSC Young Boys (SUI); PAOK FC (GRE); FC Unirea Urziceni (ROU); AJ Auxerre (FRA); UC Sampdoria (ITA); Celtic FC (SCO); SC Braga (POR); FC Dynamo Kyiv (UKR); Fenerbache SK (TUR).

The four teams they CANNOT face are: AFC Ajax (NED); FC Zenit St. Petersburg (RUS); Werder Bremen (GER); Sevilla FC (ESP). Based on the teams they could face, there isn’t too much for Spurs to be worried about.

3) Assuming Tottenham get through their round of qualifying, they will most likely be in the 3rd pot. Out of all the clubs remaining, they are currently ranked 16th, but to stay in the 2nd pot, they’d have to hope that Sevilla, Werder Bremen and Zenit all fail to qualify. Zenit has to go through 2 stages of qualifying to make it to the group stage, but both Sevilla and Werder Bremen only have 1 stage (same as Tottenham), and both should be favored to go through.

4) Of the teams that automatically qualified for the Group Stages (most through winning their domestic leagues), chances are that 5 of them will be in Pot 4. They are (with their current coefficients): Spartak Moscow (RUS) – 33.758; FC Twente (NED) – 25.309; FC Rubin Kazan (RUS) – 21.758; CFR 1907 Cluj (ROU) – 15.898; and Bursaspor (TUR) – 6.890. Which goes to show, when a smaller club wins their domestic league in either Turkey or Romania, Sir Alex Ferguson rejoices.

5) So far the team with the lowest coefficient to progress in the Champions League this year is… The New Saints FC from Wales. They have a staggeringly tiny coefficient of 0.766, but have advanced thanks to a lucky draw that saw them play Bohemian FC from Ireland in the 2nd Qualifying Round. Maybe the Irish should stick to Gaelic football and whinging about hand balls.

Based on #1 and 3 above, we could very well see a group that includes Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Tottenham. I think that Spurs will get through to the group stages, but based on their almost assured 3rd pot placement, they’ll have a very tough time getting through to the knockout rounds, right? Well, maybe not.

I decided to look over last year’s Group Stage results, based on the Coefficient Rankings at that time. Instead of listing out each team’s coefficient, I’ve simply supplied where they would have ranked (on a scale of 1 to 32) going into the group draw.

Group A:
Bordeaux (#23), Bayern Munich (#8), Juventus (#15), Maccabi Haifa (#27)

Bordeaux came out of Pot 3 to win the group, so it’s obviously possible. In their favor was a group where the Pot 2 team (Juventus) struggled all season domestically. This could be the exception that proves the rule.

Group B:
Manchester United (#4), CSKA Moscow (#12), Wolfsburg (#25), Besiktas (#24)

Sir Alex’s “donations” to UEFA came through again with a relatively weak group. This one played out almost exactly to form, with the only fluctuation being that Wolfsburg from Pot 4 came in above Besiktas from Pot 3.  But considering they were only 1 spot apart in the coefficients, it’s hardly an upset.

Group C:
Real Madrid (#11), Milan (#5), Marseille (#18), Zurich (#28)

Another group that fell pretty close to the coefficient rankings, although Milan’s #5 ranking was obviously too high considering how poorly they ended last season.

Group D:
Chelsea (#2), Porto (#13), Atletico Madrid (#22), APOEL (#31)

Nothing exciting here; all results to form.

Group E:
Fiorentina (#21), Lyon (#9), Liverpool (#3), Debrecen (#32)

Another Pot 3 group winner, Fiorentina won its group (just like Bordeaux), although against a side that was miserably overrated (Liverpool) and the lowest ranked team in the 32 (Debrecen).

Group F:
Barcelona (#1), Inter (#10), Rubin Kazan (#29), Dynamo Kyiv (#19)

Pretty close to form, and considering Rubin Kazan won the Russian League again last year, they were underrated going into the draw.

Group G:
Sevilla (#7), Stuttgart (#20), Unirea Urziceni (#30), Rangers (#16)

What has Sevilla done so well to garner such a high coefficient? It’s actually gone UP since the 2009-10 CL season as well. The main thing we got out of this group is that Scottish teams should be ranked closer to the Swiss and Hungarian champions as opposed to the Serie A and La Liga qualifiers.

Group H:
Arsenal (#6), Olympiacos (#17), Standard Liege (#26), AZ (#14)

The Arsenal had an easy group, mostly due to the fact that AZ Alkmaar seemed to be horribly overrated in their coefficient. Well, not as much as Liverpool maybe, but close.

So of the 16 teams that made the Knockout Round, they came out of the following pots:
Pot 1: 7 out of 8
Pot 2: 5 out of 8
Pot 3: 4 out of 8
Pot 4: 0 out of 8

Statistics show that a team in the 3rd pot has almost as good of a chance of getting to the knockout rounds as a team in Pot 2. (Note: sample size limitations of this analysis require me to state that extrapolation of this data carries a margin of error of +/- 90%.)

So, seeing this data, what chances do I give Tottenham of getting out of their group? I’d say it’s 50/50.

Below is my guess as to the 32 teams that will make the group stages, separated by their projected pots and ranked by their current UEFA coefficients. While there are a few tough games in the bottom 16, and one or 2 not-so-intimidating squads in the 2nd 8, once again I think the competition will be watered down and the top teams will get easy passage to the knockout round.

The only compelling question: which team in Pot 1 will draw Real Madrid, and consequently, what team will knock out Madrid in the round of 16?

POT 1

POT 2

POT 3

POT 4

The first legs of both 3rd Qualifying Rounds are underway, with few surprises as yet (and yes, Sasha Kljestan scored a Champions League goal for Anderlecht).

There are 10 matches in the Champions Path; those 10 winners will face off in the final Playoff Round in mid-to-late August. Similarly, there are 5 matches in the 3rd Qualifying Round of the Best Placed Path beginning on July 27. Those 5 winners will be drawn against the 5 teams that received a bye into the Playoff Round, and those 5 matches will also be played in mid-to-late August.

And remember: Just because PFC Litex Lovech is playing MSK Zilina, it doesn’t mean you have to watch. It just means I have to.