Friday, July 08, 2016

European Super League 2016-17

UPDATED 6-4-17: The final standings have been added below.

Some of the richest clubs of European football have been making noise about permanent spots in the UEFA Champions League, or creating a closed European Super League. Naturally, I would prefer an open Super League, with promotion and relegation with the domestic leagues.

Since there are too many "big" clubs for one twenty-team league, I have created a twenty-team Super League and a second division with forty teams, split into East and West Leagues. To pick which teams are placed in which leagues, I used the UEFA Club Coefficients from the end of the 2014-15 season. After the 2015-16 season, two teams were relegated from the Super League to Division 2, replaced by the east and west champions. Two teams from each Division 2 league were relegated, replaced by the four teams that progressed the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League. (Ideally, this would just be the final four Champions League teams, with the relegated teams automatically qualified for the next season's Champions League so they have the potential for promotion as soon as possible).

Basel 1893 were relegated from the Super League to Division 2 West. Shakhtar Donetsk were relegated from the Super League to Division 2 East. PSV Eindhoven and Dynamo Kyiv were promoted to the Super League. Hannover 96, Twente, Metalist Kharkiv, and København were relegated to their respective domestic leagues. Wolfsburg and Gent were promoted to Division 2 West. Sparta Praha and Fenerbahçe were promoted to Division 2 East.

To keep the two Milan clubs in the same league, Wolfsburg are in the west league, even though they are east of Milan.

Here is a map of the sixty teams in the international leagues. Click the rectangle tab thing in the upper left to get to the list where you can deselect the separate divisions.

Here are the final 2016-17 standings.

These standings include games only against teams in their division (Super League or Division 2). Note that not all teams played any such games this season. I've positioned them based on their UEFA Club Coefficient rankings. That is the tiebreaker in general, after number of games played.

The four teams promoted from the domestic leagues will be the four teams (that aren't above) who progressed the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League. Thus, Leicester City, Monaco and Celta de Vigo qualified for promotion to 2017-18 Division 2. The fourth is Borussia Mönchengladbach, who beat out the following on the UEFA club coefficient tie-breaker: København, Krasnodar, APOEL and Rostov.