It is relevant because Portugal's ranking is ~95% based on Benfica, Porto, Sporting and Braga, independently of how many teams we have in europe. The rest of the teams don't have the power to help the ranking, they just make it worse. This year these 4 teams will only have to support 1 other team (instead of the usual 2/3), so our country coef will benefit greatly from that.
And RPL, being a more even league, will have good contribution from 5 sides (I do not expect Sibir to contribute much) BTW, Ukraine just, I believe, passed Russia.
Sporting ( Por ) 2-1 FC Nordsjælland Bangor City FC 1-2 Marítimo ( Por ) Beşiktaş (Tur) 3-0 Plzeň OFK 1-5 Galatasaray ( Tur ) Apollon 2-1 Sibir ( Rus) * advances on away goals
Europa League 3rd Qualifying Round - 2nd leg Apollon 2 - 1 Sibir (RUS) aggregate 2 - 2 - Sibir goes through Zestafoni 0 - 1 Karpaty (UKR) aggregate 0 - 2 - Karpaty goes through Dnipro (UKR) 2 - 0 Spartak Zlatibor aggregate 3 - 2 - Dnipro goes through Sporting (POR) 2 - 1 Nordsjaelland aggregate 3 - 1 - Sporting goes through Bangor City 1 - 2 Marítimo (POR) aggregate 3 - 10 - Marítimo goes through RANKING UKR------35.633 (6/6 teams) RUS------35.541 (6/6 teams) POR------34.996 (5/5 teams)
Braga contributed 15% for Portugal's 2010 ranking. Unfortunately Marítimo + Guimarães + Setubal + Nacional + Leiria + Paços Ferreira + Belenenses all toguether only contributed 8%. So I really hope that Marítimo wins the play-off and then wins some more points in the group stage.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE PLAYOFF DRAW Dinamo Kyiv (UKR) vs Ajax Zenit (RUS) vs Auxerre Braga (POR) vs Sevilla EUROPA LEAGUE PLAYOFF DRAW Bayern Leverkusen vs Tavriya (UKR) Dnipro (UKR) vs Lech Omonia vs Metalist Kharkiv (UKR) CSKA Moscow (RUS) vs Anorthosis Sibir (RUS) vs PSV Eindhoven Lausanne vs Lokomotiv Moscow (RUS) Genk vs FC Porto (POR) Sporting (POR) vs Brondby BATE Borisov vs Marítimo (POR)
Not particularly easy. BATE has more experience than Marítimo, but I admit that it's one of the most acessible teams that the portuguese could get.
So did Traviya and Sibir, the only difference is that Braga can still continue their european campaign in EL. What's truly interesting is that Marítimo can put Portugal as the only country (out of the three) with all teams still in competition. We'll have to wait and see...
Oh, I'm sorry, too late now. In the uefa's website they show the draw by flags instead of tags and I guess I didn't check them all right.
Portugal finished in 6th last year with 6 teams while Russia was outside of the top 10 (13th?) with 6 teams. This year Portugal has 5 and Russia 6. We will leap frog Russia this year. There was another thread about Russia being the 6th best in 5 years time (2012) and so far everything I stated in that thread has come to pass. YOU CANNOT BE THE 6TH BEST LEAGUE IN EUROPE BASED SOLEY ON DOING WELL IN THE UEFA CUP. Zenit and CSKA's UC wins are the only reason they got so high in the rankings and now that they have to show up in the CL their numbers are dropping fast.
It means that if Marítimo goes through, Portugal will still have every team in competition. 5 out of 5. While Russia and Ukraine will at least have one team eliminated before the group stage of both competitions. At least, by taking a look at the draw it seems the most likely scenario.
Actually the only 2 teams that did okay from Russia last season were the 2 CL teams. The reason the country ranked 13th was mainly due to the poor Europa League performance. You've got it all backwards.
Right of course, the 11.250 point 07/08 season where Zenit lead the charge of 4 teams (in the UEFA Cup) by getting half of their total points and the 9.750 point 08/09 season where CSKA lead the charge of 4 teams (in the UEFA Cup) are nothing compared to that amazing 6.166 points last year where Rubin and CSKA set the Champions League world ablaze. All sarcasm aside, the fact is they got to the position based on the UEFA Cup. Doing "ok" in the CL last year doesn't cut it to be the 6th best league in Europe.
What are you going on about now? You wrote "now that they have to show up in the CL their numbers are dropping fast." Fact is, the first time they sent 3 teams to the Champions League (ie. last season) those teams did okay for the most part. It was the Europa League that killed them last season. Dinamo Moskva - lost in qualifying Rubin - respectable 3rd place in group containing 2 best teams in all of Europe CSKA - quarterfinals. 2013.
It'll be easier for Portugal to defend 6th place this time (IF we get it this year, which looks like the most probable scenario imo). Why? Because now the 6th place only qualifies 6 teams instead of 7. So there'll be one less unreliable portuguese team hurting our ranking. It'll still be hard because we only have 4 reliable teams in Europa - Benfica, Porto, Sporting and Braga (for now, let's hope they can keep it up). All the other teams hardly contribute anything to the ranking.
Nacional did well last year. Maritimo is doing well this year and Braga has shown that they are compotent in Europe (besides last years debacle) I think the years where we had 6-7 teams has given teams like Nacional and Maritimo enough exposure that they are more comfortable playing outside of Portugal. It worked for Braga, 5 years ago Hearts were making us look bad now we can out play Celtic and are developing an Identity in Europe. The next step for us is to make it to the CL Group stage weather it's this year or 3 or more years from now all depends but we have shown incredible growth over the last 6 years.