UEFA’s  team rankings are determined accordingly to the performance of each individual team in the Champions League and Europa League having as reference the last five years. Team Ranking is important since it defines top seeded clubs in each draw, thus granting higher graded teams the privilege not to play with stronger pairs in early stages of competitions.

In each Champions League and Europa League game a team is awarded two points for a win and one point for a draw. Points are awarded only for matches that have actually been played, in accordance with the results ratified by UEFA. Penalty shoot-outs do not affect the result used to calculate the coefficient. In qualifying matches, as indicated below, points scored differ whether they respect to Champions League or Europa League.

Furthermore, since 2010 a team’s qualification for the Champions’ League group phase grants a bonus of 4 points (2 points before 1995, 1 point between 1995 and 2003 and 3 points in the period ranging from 2004 till 2009). Additionally, qualification for the first knock-out round of the Champions League (after the group phase) is worth 5 bonus points (no points were awarded before 2004 and 1 point was conceded between 2004 and 2009). Finally, 1 additional bonus point is awarded for reaching the quarter final, the semi final and the final (these are cumulative). All this means that a team reaching the Champions League Final, and apart from points resulting from wins and draws, collects a total of 12 bonus points.

For the case of the Europa League, 1 bonus point is awarded for reaching the quarterfinals, semi-finals and final (points are cumulative. This means that a a team reaching the Europa League final only gets a total of 3 bonus points, which stresses how important it is for team to be inside the Champions League competition, not only in terms of ranking, but also in what concerns revenues.

The computation of the UEFA Team Ranking proceeds as follows:

a) The team ranking of a certain year is calculated by summing up the number of points of each team, which are determined accordingly with the above mentioned and c) below, and 20% of the country ranking of that year (50% before 2004 and 33% between 2004 and 2008).

b) For the team ranking the match results in qualifying rounds do not count.

c) Qualification matches of the Champions League and the Europa League awards bonus points as follows (this is in force since 2009):

 (i) Champions League

− 0.5 points awarded to each club eliminated in the first qualifying round.

− 1 point awarded to each club eliminated in the second qualifying round.

− 0 points awarded to each club eliminated in the third qualifying round and in the play-offs. The clubs eliminated at these stages move into the UEFA Europa League and join the UEFA Europa League coefficient calculation system.

(ii) Europa League

− 0.25 points awarded to each club eliminated in the first qualifying round.

− 0.5 points awarded to each club eliminated in the second qualifying round.

− 1 point awarded to each club eliminated in the third qualifying round.

− 1.5 points awarded to each club eliminated in the play-offs.

– From the 2009/10 season, clubs that reach the group stage are guaranteed a minimum of two points even if the number of points actually obtained during this stage is lower. This guaranteed minimum is not added to the points obtained by the clubs concerned during the group stage.

– The 5 above mentioned qualification points are not cumulative.

d) The global team ranking used for seeding clubs for draws in the Champions League and in the Europa League is then computed by summing up the last 5 previous years.

For more detailed information, check UEFA’s regulation on:

http://pt.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/competitions/Regulations/01/62/69/60/1626960_DOWNLOAD.pdf