Originally Posted by
WillieMorgan
The way that outlying teams qualify for all the UEFA competitions, both club and international, is through a grading system of coefficients. It awards points for a team's performances across the previous five years of competition. The teams and nations with the highest points tallies automatically qualify into the main group stages of a competition, the others have to negotiate play-off rounds. That's what Ajax are currently doing. Despite last seasons heroics they are way down in 21st place in UEFA's coefficients table. By contrast United are in 10th place this year. Even though some club whose name escapes me won the Champions League last season they themselves are still in 7th place on this listing.
If you can believe it the top ranked club on UEFA's rankings are Real Madrid. That's through the number of Champions League titles they've won in recent years. It basically rewards all the big clubs and nations and pretty much ensures their places in the group stages provided they perform well enough in their domestic leagues. As a nation the Netherlands are surprisingly low down also. They sit at 12th place in the international standings. Ludicrous really for such a great footballing nation.