Europa League begins, sorta…
By: timmyg | June 22nd, 2009The first and second round draw for the inaugural Europa League was held today, and although it has little effect to who we will actually play, it may help decide who we may play.
Here’s a link to the first round, and the second round.
So for the 50 teams in the first Qualifying Round: the cup winners from Andorra and San Marino, 16 second-placed teams are from countries ranked 35-51, 29 third-placed teams are from countries ranked 22-51 and 3 teams who won the the Fair Play competition.
The Second Qualifying Round has 80 (!!!) teams: the 25 winners from the first qualifying round, 24 cup winners from countries ranked 28-51, 16 second-placed teams from countries ranked 19-34, 6 third-placed teams from countries ranked 16-21, 6 fourth-placed teams from countries ranked 10-15, and 3 fifth-placed teams from countries ranked 7-9.
Also, Bert Kassies has a sublime compiling of each club’s coefficient.
For these purposes, a coefficient under UEFA determines how many spots a country gets in an international competition. Although I’m normally opposed to ranking and mathematic formulas to determine things (read: the BCS), I find this methodology to be quite intriguing.
Yet despite playing in the #1 league, according to UEFA, Fulham only managed a 15.889, just below Hapoel Tel-Aviv. Once I get around to it, I am going to compile a complete listing of all 133 clubs participating in the qualifying rounds and rank their co-efficient. Until then, here’s a photo of how we stack up in the Third Qualifying Round:
Note: unseeded teams are teams that would have advanced from the second round. Thanks again to Bert for doing some serious grunt work.
So what do you all think? Fair rankings? Are we really worse than Austria Wein? Or better than Anorthosis Famagusta?
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