Playoff Teams Competing For Chance to be Beat Bad in Group Stage

Every time this time of year, I shrug my shoulders of what potential FIFA and the UEFA Champions League has. 54 different leagues qualify for the prestigious European Club competition. That's a total of 78 teams fighting it out for one holy grail trophy at the end of May.

Yet, we seem to be having the same six teams in the Quarter Finals every year. If anything, the FIFA World Cup this summer proved that most countries develop high end talent in  some form of another. France defeated Croatia in the final would have been the equivalent of PSG dismantling Dinamo Zagreb.

For those of us that follow soccer, that Champions League Final would be so far fetched to even think of the probability of it coming to fruition.

This is because money has taken over in European soccer and the powerhouse teams in smaller countries haven't kept up.

League Path

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Benfica	1	PAOK	21 Aug	29 Aug
Ajax	2	Dynamo Kyiv	22 Aug	28 Aug

Champions Path

Red Star Belgrade	1	Red Bull Salzburg	21 Aug	29 Aug
BATE Borisov	2	PSV Eindhoven	21 Aug	29 Aug
Young Boys	3	Dinamo Zagreb	22 Aug	28 Aug
MOL Vidi	4	AEK Athens	22 Aug	28 Aug

The renaming 12 teams are fighting it out for the last 6 spots. UEFA revamped the whole qualifying process so that this last playoff stage is as competitive as possible. I think it's just fools gold however as the gap is still there. FIFA just found a way to avoid it.

In the Club coefficient rankings, the only way for a country outside of the Top 15 in the rankings to have a long run in the European Cups is in the Europa League.

Out of the 12 teams competing for the renaming six spots, most likely none of them will get to the round of 16.

In fact, any team outside of the Top 8 likely won't advance either. If they do, they are just going to get annihilated in the next round. That's why they created the Champions Path in the Europa League to put more emphasis on winning your league.

Here are the coefficient standings:

Rank Association Coeff. Teams 1 Spain 104.998 4 2 Germany 79.498 3 England 75.962 4 Italy 73.332 5 France 56.665 3 6 Russia 50.532 7 Portugal 49.332 2 8 Ukraine 42.633 9 Belgium 42.400 10 Turkey 39.200 11 Czech Republic 33.175 12 Switzerland 32.075 13 Netherlands 31.063 14 Greece 27.900 15 Austria 25.350 16 Croatia 25.250 1 17 Romania 24.350 18 Denmark 24.000 19 Belarus 19.875

Rank Association Coeff. Teams 20 Poland 19.750 1 21 Sweden 19.725 22 Israel 19.375 23 Scotland 18.925 24 Cyprus 18.550 25 Norway 18.325 26 Azerbaijan 17.750 27 Bulgaria 15.875 28 Serbia 15.375 29 Kazakhstan 15.250 30 Slovenia 13.125 31 Slovakia 11.750 32 Liechtenstein 11.000 0 33 Hungary 9.500 1 34 Moldova 9.500 35 Iceland 8.375 36 Finland 7.650 37 Albania 6.625

Rank Association Coeff. Teams 38 Republic of Ireland 6.575 1 39 Bosnia and Herzegovina 6.500 40 Georgia 6.375 41 Latvia 6.125 42 Macedonia 5.625 43 Estonia 5.250 44 Montenegro 5.250 45 Armenia 5.125 46 Luxembourg 4.875 47 Northern Ireland 4.500 48 Lithuania 4.125 49 Malta 4.000 50 Wales 3.875 51 Faroe Islands 3.500 52 Gibraltar 2.500 53 Andorra 1.165 54 San Marino 0.333 55 Kosovo 0.000

 So basically, any league after the Greek League has no chance in the Group stage of the UCL. That's a problem because there are 32 teams in the group stage.

Any hypothetical merger between the other Champions League competitions is a bit far fetched because of the amount of time that would be spent on a airplane to give these other teams a shot at glory.

I bring this up because creating a promotion/relegation format through the 6 Champions League tournaments is the only thing I can think of right now.

That and hope the other clubs start spending money like the big giants or else this problem will just keep on getting worse.

      
 Some teams knockout stage droughts put some North American Title droughts in perspective.