Thursday, August 20, 2020

European Super League 2020-21

UPDATED May 29: Final Standings for the season.

Some of the the richest clubs of European football have made noise about permanent spots in the UEFA Champions League, or wanting to create 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 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. Since then, each season, teams were relegated from the Super League to Division 2, replaced by the East and West champions. Beginning with the 2018-19 season, the second-place team with the better record was also promoted to the Super League. (Ideally a playoff.) Three teams from each Division 2 league are relegated, replaced by the six teams that progress the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League. (Ideally, this would just be the final 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.)

After the previous season, Porto and Genk were relegated from the Super League to Division 2 West. Dynamo Kyiv were relegated from the Super League to Division League East. Celtic, Olympiacos and Slavia Praha were promoted from Division 2 to the Super League. Gent, Sporting Portuga, Anderlecht, Fenerbahçe, Rubin and Viktoria Plzeň were relegated to their respective domestic leagues. Basel 1893 and Woverhampton Wanderers were promoted to Division 2 West. Atalanta, Copenhagen, Wolfsburg and İstanbul Başakşehir were promoted to Division 2 East.

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.

Below are the final standings.

The standings include only games against teams in a team's division (Super League or Division 2). The first tiebreaker is the number of games played. The second tiebreaker is the UEFA club coefficient rankings.

The six teams that will be promoted from the domestic leagues for the 2021-22 season are the six teams (that aren't in these international leagues) who progress the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League: Borussia Mönchengladbach, Granada, Molde, Rangers, Young Boys, and Crvena zvezda (per highest club coefficient of the teams that ended in the round of 32).