UEFA European Cups 2000/2001
 Results and Qualification
by Bert Kassies
  		uefa
 
This page was the main page of the 2000/2001 season. All text has to be interpreted within that context. No changes are applied.

On this site you will find everything about the calculation of coefficients and rankings used for the qualification and seeding of teams for the Champions League and the UEFA Cup. There are no data on individual matches other then the results. Results and qualification data for the UEFA Intertoto Cup are not available at this site.

Specific data for the qualification of teams and formats of the Champions League and UEFA Cup for the 2000/2001 season can be found at the pages below. More data on formats in previous seasons may be found in the history section. For results and rankings in previous years see the archive.

The remainder of this page contains the general format of the Champions League and the UEFA Cup, along with an explanation of the calculation of the UEFA coefficients.

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Champions League

The Champions League contains 32 teams in the first league stage, and is be preceeded by three qualifying stages. The champions of all countries enter the Champions League, but high ranked countries can send up to 4 teams. Some teams of high ranked countries are directly qualified for the league stage, while others have to play qualifying rounds.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
1st Qualifying Round July 22 champions from countries ranked 27 or lower
2nd Qualifying Round Jul-Aug involving 28 teams:
11 winners from 1st qualifying round
11 champions from countries ranked 16-26
6 second-placed teams from countries ranked 10-15
3rd Qualifying Round August involving 32 teams:
14 winners from 2nd qualifying round
6 champions from countries ranked 10-15
3 second-placed teams from countries ranked 7-9
6 third-placed teams from countries ranked 1-6
3 fourth-placed teams from countries ranked 1-3
1st League Stage Sep-Oct involving 8 groups of 4 teams each:
16 winners from 3rd qualifying round
9 champions from countries ranked 1-9
6 second-placed teams from countries ranked 1-6
1 defending cup holder
2nd League Stage Nov-Mar involving 4 groups of 4 teams each:
8 group second-placed teams from 1st league stage
8 winners from 1st league stage
Play-offs Mar-May involving 8 teams:
4 group second-placed teams and 4 winners from 2nd league stage
play the quarter finals, the semi finals, and the final

cup1 Losing teams in the 3rd qualifying round enter the 1st round of the UEFA Cup, and third-placed teams from the 1st league stage enter the 3rd round of the UEFA Cup.

No country can have more than 4 representatives in the Champions League. This implies that, if the defending cup holder comes from one of the top three ranked countries, and did not qualify directly for the Champions League, the fourth-placed team of that country has to participate in the UEFA Cup (e.g. Real Zaragoza in 2000).

If the defending cup holder already qualified directly for the 1st league stage of the Champions League, the champion of the 10th country on the country ranking list will gain direct access to the 1st league stage, the champion of the 16th country on the country ranking list will gain direct access to the 3rd qualifying round, and the champions of the 27th and 28th country on the country ranking list will gain direct access to the 2nd qualifying round. Similar changes are made if the cup holder already qualified directly for one of the qualification rounds, or if the cup holder did not qualify directly but is from one of the top three ranked countries.

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UEFA Cup

The UEFA Cup is a competition for the runners-up and the Cup Winners of each country, some teams expelled from the Champions League, the best teams of the Intertoto Cup, and teams from countries who top the UEFA Fair Play competition.

UEFA CUP
Qualifying Round August involving 84 teams:
33 Cup Winners from countries ranked 17-49
33 second-placed teams from countries ranked 16-48
13 third-placed teams from countries ranked 9-21
3 teams of the Fair Play competition
2 champions of Andorra and San Marino
Round 1 September involving 96 teams:
42 winners from the qualifying round
16 Cup Winners from countries ranked 1-16
2 third-placed teams from countries ranked 7-8
5 fourth-placed teams from countries ranked 4-8
8 fifth-placed teams from countries ranked 1-8
3 sixth-placed teams from countries ranked 1-3
16 teams eliminated from the 3rd qualifying round of the Champions League
3 Intertoto teams
1 defending cup holder
Round 2 October involving 48 teams:
48 winners of the first round
Round 3 November involving 32 teams:
24 winners of the secound round
8 third-placed teams from the 1st league stage of the Champions League
Round 4 March involving 16 teams:
16 winners of the third round
Play-offs March-May involving 8 teams:
8 winners of the fourth round play the quarter finals, the semi finals, and the final

cup3 If the Cup Winner of a country also qualifies for the Champions League, then the losing team of the cup final is qualified for the UEFA Cup. If both cup finalists qualify for the Champions League, then the two losing semi-finalists could play a play-off match to determine the cup representative of that country. However, the losing cup finalist or the winner of a play-off match do not get the UEFA Cup cup-winner spot, but are treated as a league entrant. The 'cup-winner' spot of that country goes to the team with the highest league position. In some countries there will be no play-off match between the two losing semi-finalists, but an additional team based on league position is send to the UEFA Cup. In some countries (England and France) the last league entrant position is given to the League Cup Winner.

The place for the defending cup holder is only used when that team has not otherwise qualified for either the Champions League or the UEFA Cup. If this place is not used then the cup winners of the 17th and 18th countries on the country ranking list will gain direct access to the 1st round.

UEFA Country Ranking

The basis for the UEFA rankings is the performance of teams in the European Cups during a five year period. During that period each team gets two points for a win and one point for a draw. From 1999 on these points are halved for qualification matches: one point for a win and halve a point for a draw. One bonus point is allocated for reaching the quarter final, the semi final and the final. Reaching the first round of the Champions League yields one bonus point. The so-called UEFA coefficients are calculated by taking an average, based on the total number of points divided by the total number of teams of each country.

Because the UEFA changed the calculation of the yearly coefficients suddenly with the calculation of the rankings of 1999, there are two sets of coefficients for 1995-1998. Also for this reason I splitted my archive in 2 sections: see archive.

The UEFA country ranking is computed by the sum of 5 coefficients in the last 5 years. To determine the participants in the Champions League and the UEFA Cup the last year ranking is used, because each country should know at the start of the season how many places it disposes.

UEFA Team Ranking

The UEFA team coefficients are calculated as the sum of the number of points of each individual team, and 50% of the country coefficient. For the calculation of the team coefficients games played in qualifying or preliminary rounds are not taken into account.

The UEFA team ranking is computed by the sum of 5 coefficients in the last 5 years. In this list the yellow lines with country information indicate the lowest possible value for a team of that country (even if that team didn't play any game in the last five years). The most recent team ranking is used for seeding of clubs for draws in the Champions League and the UEFA Cup.

Before 1999 a number of strong teams in the UEFA Cup were seeded such that those teams do not meet in the first two rounds. To determine these teams, the sum of the ratio of the number of points achieved, divided by the number of games played by each team, was calculated for the past five years.

Results

The results of the European Cup matches since 1990, the UEFA coefficients, the UEFA country ranking and team ranking are available in the archive.