Draws, Paths and Seeds: How do the UEFA Qualifying draws work?

The First Qualifying Round ties of the Champions League and Conference League are over, and on Monday, the teams that made it through to the Second Qualifying round will find out who awaits them in the Third. It’s a quirk of UEFA (and a product of the qualifying matches coming thick and fast from now until the end of August) that the draws are done this far in advance, with the draws for next week’s ties being completed before a ball had even been kicked in the Preliminary Round. But how have the draws worked up to now, and what can we expect on Monday?

A few general principles

While for the most part, clubs are sorted into seeded and unseeded according to their co-efficients, to speed up the draw process, in early rounds clubs are allocated into groups before the draw. There used to be a time when this was done geographically so clubs from Central and Eastern Europe would play each other, clubs from Southern Europe would play each other, and clubs from Northern and Western Europe would play each other, but it looks like now the groups are designed to have similar spreads of ability. Certainly Linfield and Glentoran, who over the course of the last two weeks had to travel to Albania and Malta respectively, know that it’s not just about geography!

Anyway, this process is particularly useful when you get to the Main Path of the Conference League Second Qualifying Round. Instead of drawing 90 teams into 45 individual ties, the teams are sorted into 9 groups of 5 seeded and 5 unseeded teams. Then numbers are drawn out, so let’s say Number 1 is drawn against Number 9. Then, team number 1 in every group, is automatically drawn against number 9 in their respective group, and the time it takes to carry out the draw is reduced by 88%.

Also, when you get to the later rounds, and you don’t know the outcome of earlier ties before you make the draw, UEFA use the higher co-efficient. For example, Ferencváros were seeded in the First Qualifying Round draw, and the winner of Ferencváros versus KÍ was also seeded, according to the Hungarian champions’ position in the rankings. This effectively means that Faroese champions KÍ have inherited the seeding for this week’s tie, but the irony is that as their opponents, BK Häcken, knocked out their seeded opponents The New Saints, KÍ still have the higher co-efficient.

How did the draw for the Preliminary Round and First Qualifying Rounds work?

These are the simplest draws: if you missed the Preliminary Round, one of the teams hosts a knockout tournament of the four teams involved, with the winner taking part in the Champions League First Qualifying Round, and the losers dropping into the Conference League. The four teams are split into seeded and unseeded according to their co-efficient, so the top two each faced a team from the bottom two, the winners advanced to the Final, and the winner of that (Icelandic champions Breiðablik) advanced to the First Qualifying Round. As always, it was assumed that the team with the highest co-efficient (that was actually Montenegrin champions Budućnost Podgorica) would advance, but as their co-efficient wasn’t high enough to be seeded in the draw, it made no practical difference.

So apart from that, the First Qualifying Round draws are the simplest: all the teams in the Champions League ties are League Champions, they’re sorted by co-efficient into seeded and unseeded; all the teams in the Conference League ties are either Cup Winners or higher placed runners-up, and they’re also sorted by co-efficient into seeded and unseeded. So far, so straightforward.

But what about the draws for this week’s ties in the Second Qualifying Round?

It now gets a little more complex as this is where we first start to see the separate paths emerge in the draw. But for the most part, co-efficients are still used to determine seedings.

So in the Champions League, the Champions Path contains, well, League Champions, who either won a First Qualifying Round tie or whose national association is high enough up the Access List to go straight into the Second, and they were sorted by either their co-efficient, or that of the team UEFA expected to win. For the most part, where there hasn’t been an upset, it hasn’t caused too much of a problem, as the seeded team who got knocked out in the First Qualifying Round wasn’t seeded in the draw for the Second. The exception to that is Ferencváros, who are replaced by KÍ, but as we saw earlier, their opponents this week also knocked out seeded opponents and have a lower co-efficient than the Faroese outfit. The club with the most reason to feel aggrieved is Astana: the Kazakh champions are the highest-ranked unseeded team, so if the draw for the Second Qualifying Round had taken place after the First Qualifying Round ties had been completed, they’d have moved into the seeded pot and would be up against a far easier opponent in this round than Dinamo Zagreb.

Anyway. As I said, this when we start seeing multiple paths in the qualifying rounds, and the Second Qualifying Round is where the League Path is introduced, with runners-up from the Ukrainian, Greek, Swiss and Belgian leagues joining the Champions League. Like the champions, they’re sorted into seeded and unseeded pots by co-efficient.

And the Conference League Main Path works the same way: the teams who advanced from the First Qualifying Round, or join the competition at this stage are ranked by co-efficient and sorted into a seeded and unseeded pot.

But the Champions Path is where it gets fiddly: this is the path for the losing teams from the Preliminary and First Qualifying Round of the Champions League, and co-efficient doesn’t play a part in the seeding.

Moreover, when the Access List was drawn up, it was assumed that Russian teams would still be taking part, and also that the Champions League title holder wouldn’t also qualify for the Champions League Group Stage through their League position, so there’d be a total of twenty teams in this draw. As the Access List has had to be rejigged to fill the vacancy left by Russia, and Manchester City won both the Champions League and the Premier League, there are in fact only eighteen teams in the hat, and ten spaces in the Third Qualifying Round to fill. This means that two teams — Flora Tallinn and Lincoln Red Imps have been drawn byes to the Third Qualifying Round.

As for the rest, here’s the tricky part. Of the remaining teams, the three sides to have lost their ties in the Preliminary Round are unseeded. Which means there are thirteen seeded teams and three unseeded teams.

Remember the groups I talked about? UEFA divided the sixteen teams into three groups, each including one unseeded team and the rest being seeded. The first seeded team to be drawn out was drawn against the unseeded team in their group, and the remaining seeded teams were drawn against each other, turning the rest of the draw into a bit of a free-for-all. It won’t be the last.

How have last week’s ties affected Monday’s Third Qualifying Round draw?

This is where the scheduling of the draws plays a big part. As we saw, drawing the Second Qualifying Round before ties in the First have been played has affected who was and wasn’t seeded in the Second, but most of the teams on the wrong end of upsets weren’t seeded in this round anyway, so there’s other than the surprise of seeing the winner of KÍ versus BK Häcken in the draw at all, there’s only one change to the seedings in the Champions League: if the draw for the Third Qualifying Round had already taken place, KÍ would still take the seeding earned by Ferencváros. But as this draw is taking place after we know that Ferencváros have lost their tie, their seeded spot in Monday’s draw goes to the team with the next highest co-efficient. Norwegian champions Molde are now seeded.

In the Conference League, last week’s results have no material impact on Monday’s draw: the lowest ranked seeded team in the draw has a co-efficient of 11.000. The highest-ranked teams to take part in last week’s matches at all had a co-efficient of 10.000. So apart from one Second Qualifying Round tie that’s the result of a double upset and will look surprising in the Third Qualifying Round (Balzan versus Neman Grodno, I’m looking at you).

So how will Monday’s draws work?

The Champions League draws will work just as they did for the Second Qualifying Round. The teams in the Champions Path are sorted into seeded and unseeded teams by co-efficient. And the teams in the League Path are also sorted the same way. There’s also a little more UK interest at this stage as Rangers go into the hat: they’ll be seeded and will play either the winners of one of the Second Qualifying Round ties, Austrian runners-up Sturm Graz, or Serbian runners-up TSC Bačka Topola.

This is also the first time we’ve talked about qualifying for the Europa League, and there are a few oddities to discuss:

• The Champions Path and Main Path converge in the Play-offs rather than at the Group Stage (unlike in the Champions League and Conference League);
• Co-efficients aren’t used to determine seeding at all;
• The Europa League qualifying process starts with round 3 (I find this intensely annoying).

I’ll start with the Champions Path, for teams that drop down from the Champions League Second Qualifying Round: this is a free-for-all as there’s no seeding at all.

For the Main Path, two ties will be drawn, with the two teams (Slavia Prague and Olympiakos) joining the Europa League at this stage being seeded, and the two teams who drop down from the League Path of the Champions League being unseeded. This is where the outcome of those Champions League Second Qualifying Round ties not being known when this draw is made creates a pickle: the two ties are Dnipro-1 versus Panathinaikos, and Servette versus Genk.

The reason this creates a pickle is that teams from the same national association can’t meet each other, there are only two ties to be drawn and there is a Greek team in each pot: Olympiakos cannot be drawn against the loser of Dnipro-1 versus Panathinaikos, in case the Greek runners-up lose the tie. So unless UEFA take a last-minute decision to waive this rule, we already know this draw before it’s taken place: Olympiakos have to play the losers of Servette versus Genk, so Slavia Prague have to play the losers of Dnipro-1 and Panathinaikos.

By contrast, the Conference League is much simpler: the teams in the Main Path are sorted by co-efficient like always, and the teams in the Champions Path are in a free-for-all draw with no seeding.

So now you know what to expect, but there is also the small matter of the Second Qualifying Round matches, with the first leg being this week. Let’s go back to Co-efficient Corner.

What impact will this week’s matches have on the co-efficients?

As with the First Qualifying Round, the impact of individual matches will be on the Country Co-efficient rather than the clubs, but as always, clubs with a low (or no) co-efficient of their own will be relying on Country Co-efficient for their seedings in next year’s competitions. For the rest of the clubs, however, it’s the overall outcome of the ties that will determine their position.

We’ll start with the simplest calculations, in the Conference League. Team that have got this far already have a co-efficient of 1.500 for the year: that’s enough for Haverfordwest County, who upset Shkëndija Tetovo on penalties on Thursday night, to use their own co-efficient in next year’s seedings rather than relying on the Welsh Country Co-efficient. However, Hibernian, who join the competition at this stage, are a long way off breaking free of the Scottish Co-efficient. But all teams who win their ties and progress to the Third Qualifying Round get a minimum of 2.000, so there’s an extra half point in it for them.

For the Champions League ties it’s a little more nuanced: any team that loses drops into the Europa League Third Qualifying Round, and if they lose that tie, they drop into the Conference League Play-off, so the worst case scenario for a team playing a Champions League Qualifier this week is a co-efficient of 2.500.

Teams that win are guaranteed some sort of Group Stage football, but guarantee they get depends on what path they’re in. If they’re in the Champions Path, the worst case scenario is that they lose their Third Qualifying Round tie, drop into the Europa League Play-off, lose that, and end up in the Conference League Group Stage. Like the Conference League Play-off, that guarantees you a minimum co-efficient of 2.500, but I’ll explain what happens to co-efficient points once you’re in the Group Stage closer of those fixtures.

But in the League Path, teams that get knocked out of the Third Qualifying Round skip a qualifier and go straight into the Europa League Group Stage, so the two teams in the League Path that win their ties, get a minimum of the Europa League and a co-efficient of 3.000.

Finally, before I sign off this week: a word on Glentoran versus Gżira United: the Maltese outfit beat Glentoran 14–13 on penalties, with 28 penalties being taken and 27 being successful. Yes, that is a record and the endurance of both teams deserves serious recognition!