A Math Nerds' Guide to the EUFA 5 Year Coefficent

Today we focus on part of soccer that would drive most American sports fans nuts, and should be something for the stat counters and math nerds everywhere.

The EUFA 5 Year Coefficient. Seriously if this was in American football I believe most fans would through up their hands and ignore it. There are actually 3 UEFA coefficients but we're going to be focusing on the Association or League Coefficient. This is a mathematical formula that determines what countries get how many spots in the international club tournaments every year. (The top two tournaments in this article, in case you don't remember.)

Click Here to Enlarge

Here's a JPEG* (on the left) that will help, click on it and it will open up a table with maps and numbers. You'll need this to understand what I'm talking about, and the table is pretty big so I didn't want to clutter up the article with it. (By the way this table only shows places 1-29, the real table (located on this page) goes all the way to 53, if your a glutton for punishment.)

The basics of this are simple. Every time one of your countries teams get a win in Champions League or Europa League your country gets two points, a tie gets you one. Losses get you no points. (If you win or lose in extra time (overtime for Americans) you get the normal amount of points. But Penalty shoot-outs do not count.) You also get bonus points for getting past certain stages of the tournaments. Then the amount of points you get are divided by how many teams your country sent to these tournaments.  The points are added up over the last five years and that is how all 53 teams are ranked for the upcoming tournaments.

Also there is a great site for understanding this here. It also has a table to explain points won by each team (sorted by country). Yeah, a sport which may require 2 tables in order to understand. Those of you who were told there wouldn't be any math are excused. (Your also liars, it says math in the Title of the post.)

2001- Bayern Munich the last
time a German team won the Champion's League.

Recently Germany passed Italy for 3rd place overall. The main ways they did this is by developing local talent rather then pay huge amounts for big name players like the other major leagues, and by playing hard even in Europa League. Europa League is not considered as big of a deal and some of the higher leagues don't give it their all. *cough*Italy*cough*.  The reason this is a big deal is when a team moves into the top 3 they get 4 Champions League spots, and 3 Europa League spots. Places 4-6 get 3 for each tournament. This is on the far right hand of the first table if you want to go further with this. So right now one of my Bundesliga teams, Hannover 96 is battling for a Champions League spot, if Germany had shuffled into 3rd place in the coefficient  a couple years sooner Hannover would have a little bit more of a safety net to work with. Also the coach of Bayern Munich might have his job after this year, but that's another story.

Even if going up a place won't get you more places it can get you something else. The higher ranked teams enter the tournament later. So it's in your countries best interest to get as high on the table as possible every year. Meaning that sometimes you find yourself rooting for your rivals so that your team might have a better chance of getting in or having a favorable spot in the tournament. By the way the Champions and Europa League places are awarded two years later. That means Germany will get their extra Champions League spot in 2012-2013 not next season.

For little countries a good showing by one team can have an incredible impact, launching their country up the rankings and grabbing extra spots for their countrymen. But to stay on top you must do well every year, and it must be more then one team. It's odd to find my self cheering against Bayern Munich, and Bayern Leverkusen one week only to be cheering for them the week after, literally that happen this month.

Now since I'm using Germany as an example stick with me for one more thing. If the season were to end today. Germany would still be trailing Spain for 2nd place in the coefficient. But at the start of next season all the points from the 2006/2007 season will disappear. Making the table look something more like this. Germany would start next year in number 2, but only by a hair**. But the season isn't over, and both of these countries have 3 teams left in the 2 tournaments. There is a battle being waged and only the math savvy and the astute realize it.  So not only is the trophy on the line, but also 2nd place in the coefficents, and the team that gets further in the tournament this year will have the inside track into 2nd place.

First American team to get to the
Quarter finals since 1930. 

As a reward for getting through all of that I would like to reward you with the highlights of the game that made me interested in soccer. USA vs Germany 2002 World Cup Quarterfinal match. This will probably be an article of mine sometime in the future, but for now enjoy what maybe the finest match America ever played in the World Cup. I wish I could put up a video of the entire match.


*JPEG stolen from wikipedia, because their table is nice enough looking, it won't make your eyes bleed.
** I apologize for the pun. As an apology watch this video.