Co-efficient Corner: Matchday 1, Part 3
The League Stage momentum just keeps building! This week, the League Stage of the Women’s Champions League got underway, as did 15 of the 16 ties in the Second Qualifying Round of the Women’s Europa Cup (Minsk and Fenerbahçe play on Saturday).
Let’s go through what this week’s games mean for co-efficients. This week is a little more complex than usual as we have two different competitions at two different stages.
We’ll start with the UWCL: as we’re now in the competition proper, wins are now worth two co-efficient points, and draws are worth one. For the Country Co-efficient, those points are, as always, divided by the number of places a country was allocated in this season’s competitions. Plus which, match points kick in from this week for the Club Co-efficient: the 7 points that teams picked up just for getting here was a bonus, added on top of points earned for winning games.
As far as the Europa Cup is concerned, seeing as this is the last round where teams can drop into the competition from the Women’s Champions League, and all the teams who enter this competition directly did so in the previous round, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was in effect the First Round Proper — a Round of 32 in all but name. But when UEFA call this a Qualifying Round, they mean it, and it’s still a Qualifying Round for Co-efficient purposes. For the Country Co-efficient, wins are still worth one point and draws half a point, with that tally divided by the number of teams a country was entitled to across both competitions. The Club Co-efficient won’t come into play until next week’s second leg.
Another look at the Top 5: Arsenal move up
We’ve already had one look at the Top 5 this season, as Chelsea, one of the five top sides in the UEFA Club Rankings, had to go through the qualifiers. Now, all five of the top ranked teams are engaged.
So sitting pretty at the top of the rankings are defending champions Barcelona, who overcame an early scare to win at home to Paris FC on Wednesday. Next are last season’s runners-up OL Lyonnes, snug in second place, who started with an 8–0 demolition of Servette in Geneva.
Then come Chelsea: having made it into the League Stage after their qualifier, tonight they hosted Austria Vienna and came away with a 1–0 win.
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Finally, it’s tight between fourth and fifth: Bayern Munich drew at home to Manchester City on Tuesday, while Arsenal overtook them in the rankings thanks to a late winner from the spot at home to HB Køge later that evening.
A good week for English clubs
This will be a brief update as all three English teams are or played Top 5 teams, but the two wins and one draw added 1.666 points out of a possible two to England’s co-efficient.
Scotland return to Europa Cup action
As both Scottish teams came second in their respective UWCL mini-tournaments, they dropped into the Women’s Europa Cup but enjoyed a bye into the Second Qualifying Round. That means their fallow fortnight came to an end this week: Heart of Midlothian held Real Sociedad to a 0–0 draw at Ainslie Park, while Rangers lost 2–0 at Hammarby.
The results added 0.250 to the Scottish Country Co-efficient, but leave Scotland looking over its shoulder: with Czarni Sosnowiec’s emphatic win at Breiðablik, Poland are just one point off taking Scotland’s second spot in the Women’s Champions League qualifiers from 2028–29 onwards. Without a big expansion of the UWCL in the next revision of the Access List, next season’s SWPL Runners-up might need to make do with a starting spot in the Europa Cup qualifiers.
Next week: the Europa Cup Qualifiers Conclude
And that’s it for another week: we’re sticking with the Women’s Club Competitions next week, with Matchday 2 of UWCL and the second legs of the Europa Cup qualifiers wrapping up by Wednesday. I’ll be on hand to review the details on Wednesday night, and on Friday, I’ll report on the draw for the Europa Cup proper. Another big week ahead!
