Scotland and Celtic find themselves in a precarious place in the UEFA coefficient standings after another disappointing week.
The Hoops played their second European fixture of the season on Wednesday, with a second loss arriving at the hands of Lazio. While those defeats are hard to stomach, at least they are at UEFA Champions League level.
On Thursday, Rangers went down 2-1 to Cypriot minnows Aris Limassol. While that result was very entertaining from a Celtic point of view, it’s not great news for Scotland as a whole. Especially when Aberdeen could only draw at home to HJK Helsinki.
After Rangers, Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibernian all exited the competition they first entered in qualifying, it’s really not a good look for Scottish football.
The UEFA Country Coefficients have Scotland currently sitting in 10th — one place down from where we finished last season. However, we only have 2.600 points to show for all of our team’s efforts so far this campaign. Of all the teams inside the top 22, only Serbia have a worse total.
Furthermore, Scotland will lose its mammoth 2019/20 showing of 9.750 points next season. Given that we only managed 3.500 last season, and are on course for something similar this, it could move us a fair bit down the rankings.
This season’s Premiership champions are already guaranteed to be involved in the first version of the new Champions League next season. However, we’ll need to be inside the top ten to have access in future years.
Unless our fortunes improve a fair bit, it seems like we’ll be heading for qualifiers in the not-too-distant future. And nobody wants that.
So let’s hope Celtic can start to achieve some big results this season. If Aberdeen want to help us out that would be appreciated too. I’ll let you decide on the Rangers bit.
In other news, Brendan Rodgers explains why Celtic supporters haven’t seen more of Luis Palma so far
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