UEFA Cup vs. European Champions League

[mls0soccer0nmu]

This is probably really obvious. But I was wondering what is the difference between the UEFA Cup and the European chamions league. How do Clubs qualify for these competitions?

[kevbrunton]

The Champions League is a league for the TOP teams for across Europe. The UEFA Cup is for the next tier of teams in Europe.

There are 51 or 52 domestic leagues in Europe that send representatives to the CL or Cup. Depending upon the relative strengths of the leagues, they get 1 to 7 entries in one or the other competition.

For example this year, the strongest 3 leagues, Spain, Italy and England got 7. 4 get entry to the CL and 3 get entry into the Cup. Germany, France and Netherlands got 6 -- 3 in CL and 3 in Cup.

Some of the weaker leagues like Northern Ireland and Luxembourg get 1 entry into the CL and 2 entries into the Cup. The weakest like Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino only get 1 entry and it's in the Cup.

The other way things are balanced is the point during the competition in which teams are entered. In the Champions League, some teams qualify directly for the group phase. Others have to play 1 to 3 rounds of qualifying knockout rounds to get into the group phase.

In addition to those that qualify via placement in their domestic leagues or by winning their domestic cup, there are 3 that qualify for the Uefa Cup out of the UEFA Intertoto Cup held each summer. There are also 3 "wild cards" that qualify by winning FIFA's Fair Play award.

[mls0soccer0nmu]

Thanks for clearing that up.

[RaJitsu]

How many CL-places a country has, is deceided by a table of points, stated by the UEFA, which can be earned by clubs from that country (like kevbrunton said). The Dutch teams did terrible over the last five years. As a result, we lost a place (so now we have 1 CL-place which is cetrain, and one qualifying-place. The second qualifyingplace has been lost to Greece. Ajax however, is doing quite well at the moment, and if PSV will perform well in the next seasons CL (and Ajax or Feyenoord), we might get enough points to get that place back.

There's also a second point of difference between the UC and the CL, namely the way teams go true to then next rounds. The UC has a knock-out system wheras the CL has a poule-system for the first two rounds and then goes over in a knock-out system. However the coming CL will use a different system which is likely to be a knock-out system (I'm not sure what it will be it still can be changed).