I think that Portugal and Romania have the same problem: we only have a few teams that are competitive in Europe. While Porto, Sporting or Benfica are good teams, it's hard to get enough points with teams like Nacional. Romania will also have this problem once the likes of CFR Cluj (ironically, a team with many Portuguese players) or Poli Timisoara will enter European competitions. These teams are decent but I fear their lack of international experience.
FallenRO, you forgot to mention the first Romanian team that achieved a notable success in Europe: Universitatea Craiova. In 1982/1983, it was a Portuguese team (Benfica) that stopped Craiova in the semifinals of the UEFA Cup, on away goals after two draws.
, of course not. I just wanted to say it's ironic that a Portuguese team might be replaced in European competitions by a team with many Portuguese players.
Hi all-- Sorry I've been away from this thread for a while. So last week was pretty rough for Portuguese teams in the CL: Sporting CP 1-3 Spartak Moscow; Man United 3-1 Benfica; FC Porto 0-0 Arsenal. But the poor results were still good enough to see FCP through to the second round of the CL (where they'll face Chelsea--major grudge match!) and Benfica through to the UEFA Cup (where they'll face Dinamo Bucharest--that should be an interesting one given the recent Portuguese/Romanian trash talk on this thread). Needing only a draw to advance to the UEFA Cup, Sporting disappointed at home against Russian opposition once again--shades of UEFA Cup final 2005! Ah well. This week was better, as Braga beat Grasshoppers 2-0 to advance to the UEFA Cup over Slovan Liberec, just barely. They'll face Parma in the Round of 32. So where does this leave us? Observe: 5 Germany---------41.364 6 Portugal---------40.582 7 Romania---------40.165 8 Netherlands------37.665 9 Russia-----------35.625 All of the other teams have a realistic chance of passing us, since the 02/03 coefficient scores that drop off for us after this year are very favorable for us and not so much for any of these other countries. Russia, for example, will gain over seven points on us after this year, so we have to finish well ahead of them to hold our place relative to them (another reason that it would have been great for SCP to finish ahead of Spartak in that group). So that's the story for now. Having three of seven teams left in Europe isn't that bad, all told. Now on break til February.
I think Sevilla and Benfica will stop the Bleeding of the remaining two Romanian teams. Hopefully Braga will get through Parma as well, Porto is surely screwed with Chelsea but you never know.
Watching the Draw vid on UEFA's site I seen the pairrings for the orund of 16 and they look juicy for the Portuguese teams. Should SL Benfica win they would play the winners of: AEK Athens or PSG...They would play the first game away. Should SC Braga win they would face the winners of: Tottenham or Feyenoord and we would play at home first. Looks like quite the pairings. For Benfica they could either get revenge against Greece or welcome Pauleta back to a stadium He CAN'T score in (as well as going away to having a lot of support) For Braga, well it would be a treat to play an EPL team I don't think we ever had the pleasure or atleast not anytime recently. Also playing Feyenoord could provide more fuel to the never ending fire that now is Portugal vs The Netherlands. Hopefully we both progress on both counts to the round of 8.
Sorry about that Normally I get all team names right, but this one fell through the cracks... I was under the impression that Romanian clubs had a higher co-efficient per win or draw. My bad...
First leg UEFA Cup ties coming up in the next couple of days. I'd originally thought Braga got the tougher draw against Parma, but having read this piece on the sorry state of that side in Serie A, I'm not so sure. Having Ranieri at the help will have to help, but it may be a bit soon. The key will be for Braga to take advantage of Parma's current miserable form and rack up the goals in the first leg on Thursday. The winner of this one will get Tottenham Hotspur in the round of 16, after Feyenoord was disqualified (a fact that warms the heart of this former Amsterdam resident). Romanian teams have been the revelation of Europe for the past couple of years, and Benfica's opponent Dinamo Bucharest is leading their domestic league and boasts the competition's leading goalscorer in Niculescu. That tie (tomorrow's, in Lisbon) is going to be a tough one. One small spot for hope is Benfica's very positive record against Romanian teams in European competition (3W, 4D, 1L). Of course, the hope is for two wins, both because it would bring a much-needed set of UEFA points but also because it would set us up for advancement and possible additional points in future rounds.
75' and still 0-0 between Benfica and Dinamo Bucharest. Gomes hit the post in the first half and Simao hit the bar off a free kick just a few minutes ago. It may not be Benfica's day.
Miccoli saves us at the death with a last-gasp goal for a 1-0 win. It's not a slim margin, but (1) it's a margin; (2) we didn't give up any away goals; and (3) we gained two UEFA points. On the whole, I'll take it. Now it's up to Braga to make the week an unqualified success.
Ze Carlos with another late goal today for Braga against Parma and a great 1-0 win. This caps a perfect week for Portugal: Benfica 1-0 Dinamo Bucharest; Braga 1-0 Parma; two goals for, none against; four UEFA points; and no away goals conceded. This means that both teams can advance with a win or draw; and also with a one-goal loss in which they score a goal. The only way either team loses is on penalties or by a two-goal margin. It's far from over but I like where they're at and they really got the job done at home. When I get confirmation from Kassies' site, I'll post about whether this win puts us ahead of Russia (we're ninth now, and Spartak Moscow managed only a home draw to Celta Vigo today).
All good! I still predict that Romania will pass us this year, but once they get more teams in Europe they'll fall right off the map. They're nowhere near as deep as the SuperLiga and once we begin to see more of their teams in international competition that will become clear. Other results were good for us, though. Holland is looking dire with Ajax getting smoked and Feyenoord out for crowd trouble; and Russia got two home draws this week. We don't pass Russia for 8th place with this result, but close the gap: we're at 6.58 to their 6.625.
That's ridiculous. They don't even have a team reach the UEFA Cup Final, and are going to pass us, while we've had a team in the semfinals of the UEFA Cup (BFC), in the final (SCP), winners (FCP), winners of the CL(FCP), and quarterfinal of the CL (SLB). These are sounding more and more like FIFA rankings.
It's really just a product of the ebb and flow of the UEFA club rankings. Typically,you have big nations who are deep enough that all the seven or so teams they have in Europe do well enough that they get a high average (England, Italy, Spain, France, and to a lesser extent German. Then you have nations that are so dire that they're never going to rise out of the ranks and merit more than a couple teams in Europe. Then there are all the teams in the middle who do a lot of moving up and down in the rankings--us, Holland, Russia, maybe Greece and Scotland--for whom there can be wild swings of fortune. It was only a few years ago that we had four spots in Europe, and that meant that when only two of our teams did well, we had monster UEFA coefficients. So last year Romania had a miracle year in Europe, amassing what I think is a record number of points (16.8--more than 1 full point higher than the next yearly total by any country) when all three of their teams did well simply out of nowhere. That doesn't happen too often but when it does it provides a major boost. Combine that with Romania's having a pretty solid year now as well, and you've got a recipe for a quickly inflated UEFA ranking. But unless you're one of the five or so major nations, what goes up must come down, at least to some extent. For a while not too recently, Greece was ranked sixth or so after Panathinaikos had some great seasons, but then they couldn't sustain good performances and now they're way back down the list. As for us, I still think four teams in Europe is about as many as we merit. The fifth and sixth (and sometimes fourth) Portuguese teams have always done abysmally, and until there's some reason to think that's going to change I'm not terribly concerned about having them in there.
I agree with 4 teams, the only thing I will miss is having our runner-up team get into the CL final stages directly rather then having to play a qualifier. We all know how well our teams perform in qualifying
Good news/bad news. Porto surrenders a lead to end up drawing 1-1 with Chelsea, but the 1/6 point they accrue from the tie nudges them ahead of Russia to eighth in this year's European rankings (6.75 v. 6.625).
For those of you lamenting Romania's comparatively greater coefficient, remember that it's all about the denominator: lower is better. To illustrate, if Portugal had four rather than six teams in Europe this year, we'd have 9.875 points--fourth best in Europe, ahead of Italy and France. If, like Romania, we had only three teams, we'd have 10.833 points: still third but way ahead of Italy or France, and better than our previous best year in 02/03 when Porto won the UEFA Cup and Boavista got to the semis.
So things are on the up for Portugal's co-efficient: 2 wins and a draw this week; both Romanian clubs lost this week; and the Russians lost both matches. Looks like 6th spot is all sewn up
No actually, Romania will pass us, as will the Dutch. I think if we keep doing well in the UEFA Cup we will fend off the Russians. We're losing the 02/03 Porto points, which was 7-8 points advantage over the teams mentioned who are all right now within 1-5 points from us. The math is obvious, even if Porto, Braga and Benfica win the points earned aren't gonna be enough unless the teams go very deep. At least the Russian and Romanian Bleeding is now over, but the damage was done.
GoodDead is right. Remember that UEFA points include the current year and the past four ones; that means that the current ranking includes 02/03, but next year's ranking won't. In 02/03, Portugal had a great year with Porto winning the UEFA Cup and BFC in the semis. Combining that with our low denominator (only four teams in Europe), the result was a banner year yielding about 10.7 UEFA points. By contrast, Russia got only 3.6 points that year, and Romania a measly 2.1. The details are here. The problem with next year's rankings is that the 02/03 points will fall, giving Russia a gain of 7 and Romania a gain of over 8.5 points relative to us--those are huge margins in this calculation. So while now we sit ahead of Romania and Russia in total points, when you factor in the expected loss at the end of next year, things look bleak. Romania is less than two points behind, meaning that we'd have to finish over six points ahead of their current-year total to stay in front of them at the outset of the 07/08 season. That's not happening. Russia is a closer call: we're about six points ahead of them overall, and they stand to gain seven. So if things continue to go well and we increase our lead by another point or so, we might still edge them out. The fact that all Russian teams were eliminated from Europe today while we still have three (!) in the mix is a major plus on this front. But let's not let this fact detract from what was a famous day for Portugal. Two away wins to go with last week's pair of home wins--that's just fabulous. It not only nets us 2/3 of a point (not trivial when an overall total of 8 is a good year), but it keeps both teams in the hunt for more points. Moreover, this week's results (Porto adding a sixth of a point with yesterday's draw against Chelsea) had the following positive effects: --They increased our total points on the year to 7.4, a very respectable total so far; --They moved us ahead of Netherlands and Germany into sixth place in Europe for 06/07; and --They moved us back ahead of Germany into fifth place overall in Europe in the total five-year UEFA rankings. Those results may not hold--it depends on how well our teams continue to fare--but both SLB and Braga did fantastically well for themselves and for Portugal these past couple weeks and we can all be very proud.
More on the UEFA Rankings (In Portuguese from zerozero.pt) http://www.zerozero.pt/noticia.php?id=2994
Well, this week's UEFA coefficient is easy to calculate. Three one-goal losses means a grand total of zero points. Ouch. The real concern, as benficafan3 suggested, is in other teams' gaining ground on us. So with Bayern and PSV getting good results, we're now eighth again, behind Germany (sixth) and Holland (seventh). Those countries each have three and two teams, respectively, left in Europe, so it's going to be hard to catch them, especially since Braga is out (barring a miracle in England). Our big hope is Benfica--if they can reverse the result in Paris (not impossible--a 1-0 win would see them through) and live to fight another day, we'd have some shot at more points. But there's no one behind us threatening for eighth spot--Scotland, Russia, and Ukraine are the closest but aren't really threats.