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Country Ranking gone from 10th to 23rd in past ten years


tarapoa

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In terms of country rankings and therefore coefficients, we've dropped like a stone in the past ten years.

A few years back our runners-up finish this season would have meant Champions League qualifiers, now it means needing to negotiate FOUR qualifying rounds in order to get to Europa Group stages that we graced in 2007 by virtue of just the one victory against FC Dnipro, following a 3rd placed finish.

Things simply have to change. I'd have thought recent good results for Scots clubs against the likes of Rosenborg, Luzern and Groningen would have meant a little dunt upwards, but these came too early in the tournament to matter much for ranking points.

St Johnstone undid these great results with poor results in the next qualifying round, and Aberdeen were unlucky to run into Real Sociedad so early in the competition.

Things simply have to improve, as right now a lot of ranking points we have (based on the past five years) are from the likes of Hibs, Motherwell and Dundee United LOSING matches, but matches that happened in slightly later rounds.

Much as I enjoyed those sunny July days drinking cold beer and singing songs in the centre of Groningen and San Sebastian last summer, for it all to be over three days before the league season started was a tad depressing.

European football is something I remember happening every autumn in my younger days, and sometimes later.

So this year we have all our clubs starting out early. If St Johnstone and Aberdeen negotiate QR1 (which they should easily), it's likely they'll be unseeded in QR2 along with Inverness and then things get tricky.

Somehow all three clubs need to really perform and I think we should be aiming for at least one in the group stages, and another in the play-off round.

Otherwise, it's likely we'll just keep going down the rankings.

(ps this decline all happened well before the "armageddon" date)

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In terms of country rankings and therefore coefficients, we've dropped like a stone in the past ten years.

A few years back our runners-up finish this season would have meant Champions League qualifiers, now it means needing to negotiate FOUR qualifying rounds in order to get to Europa Group stages that we graced in 2007 by virtue of just the one victory against FC Dnipro, following a 3rd placed finish.

Things simply have to change. I'd have thought recent good results for Scots clubs against the likes of Rosenborg, Luzern and Groningen would have meant a little dunt upwards, but these came too early in the tournament to matter much for ranking points.

St Johnstone undid these great results with poor results in the next qualifying round, and Aberdeen were unlucky to run into Real Sociedad so early in the competition.

Things simply have to improve, as right now a lot of ranking points we have (based on the past five years) are from the likes of Hibs, Motherwell and Dundee United LOSING matches, but matches that happened in slightly later rounds.

Much as I enjoyed those sunny July days drinking cold beer and singing songs in the centre of Groningen and San Sebastian last summer, for it all to be over three days before the league season started was a tad depressing.

European football is something I remember happening every autumn in my younger days, and sometimes later.

So this year we have all our clubs starting out early. If St Johnstone and Aberdeen negotiate QR1 (which they should easily), it's likely they'll be unseeded in QR2 along with Inverness and then things get tricky.

Somehow all three clubs need to really perform and I think we should be aiming for at least one in the group stages, and another in the play-off round.

Otherwise, it's likely we'll just keep going down the rankings.

(ps this decline all happened well before the "armageddon" date)

No they don't. European football's a nice little bonus for doing well throughout the domestic season, not the purpose of the season, despite UEFA building their part up to try and reverse the priorities. Chill, enjoy some beers in sunny piazzas and forget all about coefficients, UEFA's tool to keep the diddies in their place.

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I don't really think there is any fairness at leaving the blame at Scottish football's performances in Europe feet here. I think since we've moved to four teams, our co-efficient has been improving again and it becomes even harder to be of a good enough standard to merit having five teams when it comes.

Looking at the Europa League qualification however, it really does look harder for countries like ours more than ever to qualify into the group stages, and that is with 16 teams already assured immediate qualification from either domestic cups or fourth/fifth placed finishes and 10 losers that already in parachute from the champions league play-off round.

That effectively leaves 22 places in the play-off round alone up for grabs, and 15 out of those 44 teams competing will have themselves dropped into this from the Champions League 'pre'-play-off round again. Leaving just a paltry 29 teams (most of which will be teams after negotiating 1 to 3 rounds already) to share the representation from 54 countries to share the spaces just to get a shot into the group stages.

I'm not going to get into whether I think this is fair or unfair, because it's not like they haven't increased the competition or upped the prize money for the EL. Even looking at some of those team in the third qualifying round of this year's EL, it looks pretty fucking hard an ask for Scottish football to roughly average a 4.6 co-efficient, just to avoid 1st round qualifying rounds at this moment in time is pretty good, if not unlucky going by all accounts. I don't think we've really clicked on to just how much European football standards have improved at this level in the last decade.

Personally, although I'd struggle to see the feasibility of it ever happening for money and busy enough football calendar purposes, I'd like to see a third European competition re-introduced. Not because of any strong reason than that we're mostly only ever seeing just under half of the continent unrepresented in either group stage, but simply because if you can make a competition lucrative enough to a happy medium between zero and whatever the EL is giving out money wise right now, I think like the attitude of a lot of football purists and fans of more middle-level teams, people would just be happy to see their club playing football in Autumn, never mind beyond Christmas.

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It's a fair point

When it comes to points allocated, are the number of points dependent on who you play and defeat or does it not matter?

You get 1 coefficient point for a win and 0.5 for draw, in CL & EL, before the groupstages... then 2pts and 1pt respectively from the groups onwards. Also bonuses of 4pts for reaching CL groups, 5pts for CL Last 16, and 1pt each for QFs, SFs & Final in either competition. Divide the total points by the number of clubs entered = coefficient score for the season.

I think the OP fails to recognise a couple of things which have exacerbated an admitted spell of poor performances a few years ago.

(1) the format of Euro competitions has changed to the detriment of smaller countries. In 2004-05 there were only 3 CL qualifying rounds and half of CL groupstage places went to qualifiers; now there are 4 qualifying rounds, and only 10 of the 32 places go to qualifiers. In 2004-05 there were only 2 qualifying rounds in UEFA Cup and 40 First Round winners provided the entry of the groups; but now there are 4 qualifying rounds in EL and from next season even more teams qualify directly or drop in from CL.

(2) countries like ours have always experienced a cyclical effect in coefficients. You drop low, progress further and pick-up more points from beating weaker opposition, these points give you more slots and later entry points... then you start entering weaker teams at later points, they lose, and you can't replace the points earned 4 or 5 years ago and start sliding backwards.

I suspect a minor secondary fact may have been the Scottish Cup - in other countries without the tradition the cups tend to be a low priority for most clubs, or they tend to be seeded / played over 2 legs / have no replays, all of which reduce the number of 'smaller' clubs who qualify (particularly as runners-up). Here the Scottish Cup is fought tenaciously by all clubs, and the open draw and replays - coupled with the frequency of Ranger / Celtic making the Final having already qualified for CL - may have increased the number of weak teams we sent forth. We certainly entered clubs from the 2nd tier more frequently than anyone else.

My philosophy in recent years has always been to hold realistic expectations for our clubs: this boils down to the idea: "play to your seeding, and go a round beyond your seeding if you can". Results like Aberdeen beating Gronigen, or St Johnstone beating Rosenborg and Lucern, are excellent so we should hope to see them repeated. Celtic also have to do their bit, and oddly enough it would be better for them to drop into EL at some point (to go on a run) than exit CL earlier.

Aberdeen and St Johnstone have got good European experience so we can hope for them to do something... Inverness are debutants so its all new to them, and they will go straight it at QR2, but if they perform to their capabilities a positive result is still possible.

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So this year we have all our clubs starting out early. If St Johnstone and Aberdeen negotiate QR1 (which they should easily), it's likely they'll be unseeded in QR2 along with Inverness and then things get tricky.

Somehow all three clubs need to really perform and I think we should be aiming for at least one in the group stages, and another in the play-off round.

Otherwise, it's likely we'll just keep going down the rankings.

Missed this point.

Your forecast is totally incorrect.

Last season Celtic went out in EL Last 32 having failed to reach CL groups... Aberdeen beat the Latvian mob home and away, got a win plus a draw off Groningen, then lost both legs to Sociedad... St Johnstone got 2 draws off Lucern, then a draw plus defeat from Spartak Trnava... and Motherwell (horrendously) got a draw and a defeat off some Icelandic mob.

Despite this our score was 4.000 and if that was repeated over the next 4 seasons we would, as things stand currently, go UP by 2 places.

If Celtic had reached EL Last 32 via CL groups... Motherwell not screwed-up... and St Johnstone and Aberdeen done better in 1 match (e.g. win not draw or draw not loss)... it would have been a very good score.

If we could average 5.000 a season we'd rise from ~24th to ~16th.

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To be fair, we were never the tenth best team in the world at the time.

Not to be confused with the FIFA World rankings, more that UEFA rated us the tenth best league in Europe, we're now 23rd.

I think the individual match results count towards the country ranking - but the round you exit at counts towards the club coefficient.

Was why I felt we should have hung on for a 2-1 win or 2-2 at home to Sociedad when it was evident we were going out - going gung-ho at the end and losing two pointless late goals cost some valuable ranking points - but not really in your thoughts at the time when your whole team is piling forward.

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Certainly something like 5.000 isn't impossible, e.g.:

Celtic win 4/draw 2 in CL qualifiers = 5pts

Celtic reach CL groups and win 1/draw 2/lose 3, finishing 3rd = 8pts

Celtic draw 1/lose 1 in EL Last 32 = 1pt

EL entrants win 4/draw 4/lose 4 = 6pts

= 20pts

= 5.000

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No they don't. European football's a nice little bonus for doing well throughout the domestic season, not the purpose of the season, despite UEFA building their part up to try and reverse the priorities. Chill, enjoy some beers in sunny piazzas and forget all about coefficients, UEFA's tool to keep the diddies in their place.

When you play in a league when you meet the same teams so often, it should become something to strive for, more than a nice little bonus.

Right now, there's almost an acceptance that none of our clubs except Celtic will play in the groups - and the fact we have to negotiate so many rounds to do so probably makes that a reality...........however, the beers taste just as good when you've also got your game head on.

I think the SPFL could help by fragmenting the league season into July-May (with a one month break after the festive fixtures)........that way QR2 is coinciding with each club having played a couple of league matches.

As for coefficients being a tool to keep the diddies in their place - agree to an extent it's scandalously weighted to the big leagues, but it wasn't so long ago our clubs were ranked alongside Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium - now we're below Belarus, Cyprus and Israel.

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As for coefficients being a tool to keep the diddies in their place - agree to an extent it's scandalously weighted to the big leagues, but it wasn't so long ago our clubs were ranked alongside Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium - now we're below Belarus, Cyprus and Israel.

Scottish teams also benefited from 10 years of the coefficient being artificially high due to the two runs of the old firm to the UEFA cup finals. Just as one score dropped off the rankings another big one off season score came on.

The same can be said of Cyprus just now and if you look at the coefficients from the last 3 seasons you will see that Cyprus and Israel are all set to fall below Scotland in the next few years.

The first way to improve the coefficient would be for Celtic to make the Champions league and then either make the last 8 or have another run to the Europa league latter stages. It would move us up to the next level in one go (The area around 15-17th) and progress could then be made from there.

The other factor is the other nations. You have the likes of the Netherlands falling down and down just now. They have only picked up just over 16 points in the last 3 season having picked up 34.6 points in the 3 seasons before this. If they keep this up they will be down at our level soon! It does seem to go in cycles for the smaller nations.

Even at the top end the English media do not seem to have noticed yet but they could lose a Champions league spot the season after next if they don't do well next season. The Italians are just 3.095 points behind having outscored England by 5.429 points this season before the Champions league final.

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When you play in a league when you meet the same teams so often, it should become something to strive for, more than a nice little bonus.

Right now, there's almost an acceptance that none of our clubs except Celtic will play in the groups - and the fact we have to negotiate so many rounds to do so probably makes that a reality...........however, the beers taste just as good when you've also got your game head on.

I think the SPFL could help by fragmenting the league season into July-May (with a one month break after the festive fixtures)........that way QR2 is coinciding with each club having played a couple of league matches.

As for coefficients being a tool to keep the diddies in their place - agree to an extent it's scandalously weighted to the big leagues, but it wasn't so long ago our clubs were ranked alongside Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium - now we're below Belarus, Cyprus and Israel.

Striving for Euro qualification is a goal, but not the be all and end all of the domestic game. If we get that sorted out first them we might perform better in Europe. That should be our priority, not manipulating the season so that a few clubs might get a round or two further in Europe. I don't think the pre-game chat in Milan, Amsterdam or Warsaw will include 'Hey, I see Inverness got further than expected in their first European campaign'

I expect most European fans won't even know, let alone care, that Scotland rarely gets a club into the UEFA group stages. European football is already too intrusive and helping to ruin domestic games. The last thing we should be doing is helping them further diddify ourselves.

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I expect most European fans won't even know, let alone care, that Scotland rarely gets a club into the UEFA group stages. European football is already too intrusive and helping to ruin domestic games. The last thing we should be doing is helping them further diddify ourselves.

Not too concerned what the European fans know, I'm more concerned about Scotland getting as many teams in as possible and going as far as possible.

In the TEN games my club has played against your club in the past two seasons, I've seen enough to suggest both clubs are well equipped to give it a decent go.

Thinking European football is some kind of burden is the attitude of some of your EPL clubs. Season 07/08 when the Dons had matches against Dnipro, Panathinaikos, Lokomotiv Moscow, Atletico Madrid, FC Copenhagen and Bayern Munich to add to our fixture calendar was anything but "intrusive".....

I'm sure Saints fans thought the same of those great nights against Rosenborg and Luzern.

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Not too concerned what the European fans know, I'm more concerned about Scotland getting as many teams in as possible and going as far as possible.

In the TEN games my club has played against your club in the past two seasons, I've seen enough to suggest both clubs are well equipped to give it a decent go.

Thinking European football is some kind of burden is the attitude of some of your EPL clubs. Season 07/08 when the Dons had matches against Dnipro, Panathinaikos, Lokomotiv Moscow, Atletico Madrid, FC Copenhagen and Bayern Munich to add to our fixture calendar was anything but "intrusive".....

I'm sure Saints fans thought the same of those great nights against Rosenborg and Luzern.

Agree we play each other far too much...the recent United v Celtic farces highlighting that...and think that our game seems to have gone downhill since the Premier League was introduced, but I don't see European games as a burden. It's still a fantastic novelty for me as a Saints supporter and I appreciate each year we qualify as it could well be our last, ever! I just don't see them as the top priority. They should always be secondary to the domestic game.

'Our standing throughout Europe' seems to be another priority that I read about. What a Maltese bar tender thinks about us isn't really important, especially as it doesn't seem to help us gain a sponsor that would appeal to them. To me it will always be domestic club games first, European second and Internationals third despite the empire builders trying to change it all around.

I think we shall need to agree to disagree and hopefully just enjoy our latest Euro trips, no matter how short they may be!

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That top 10 Euro ranking was pretty much bought by the OF with money they didn't have, their (over)spending decline & *our* ranking decline would both describe very similar downward arrows I imagine.

The Rest continue to do as well (or badly) in Europe as they have done for the 20 years or so since cash became the only determining factor in football

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I expect most European fans won't even know, let alone care, that Scotland rarely gets a club into the UEFA group stages. European football is already too intrusive and helping to ruin domestic games. The last thing we should be doing is helping them further diddify ourselves.

What is intrusive are the international matches, yes, even 'qualifiers'.

That's a whole other discussion though.

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