The Favorites and Underdogs for Advancing in Europe

By: Ian Rose | August 28th, 2009

It’s that time of year again, and after a few qualifying rounds, both the UEFA Champions League and the newly branded Europa League have drawn their group stages. 80 clubs remain in European competition, 32 in the Champions League and 48 in the Europa League. The question now is, who will survive the next cut and make it to the knockouts? Of course, that is an open question. If I had a perfectly accurate predictor, I wouldn’t be sharing it here so much as using it, Back to the Future II style, to build myself a small betting fortune. Since I don’t, let’s look at what the numbers say about who will advance and who will be going home early.

Though it is highly imperfect, the best measurement of comparative club quality across Europe is the UEFA club coefficient. It ranks every team in Europe based on performances over the past four seasons. It would be easy to say that the highest-ranked clubs in each competition will be moving on, and that will happen in a lot of cases, but chances of advancement depend on more than your own quality – they also depend on the quality of your groupmates. So I compared the coefficients of each club still alive in Europe with those of the other clubs in their group to determine the likelihood of each club surviving beyond this round. For Champions League clubs, that means finishing at least third, since third place drops into the Europa League. For the Europa teams, that means first or second place. So obviously, the CL clubs have a big advantage here, but what else is new?

So what we are measuring here is how much better (or worse) each team is compared to the team they would have to finish higher than to move on, with UEFA coefficients as the measure of quality. Here’s what we get:

Most Likely to Succeed: Any guesses? Duh. Barcelona, the #1 ranked club in Europe and defending Champions League holder, will probably not being going home after the groups.

Which Champions League fourth-ranked team is most likely to survive?: Wolfsburg, the German champions, who not surprisingly look ready to give Besiktas and the rest of the group a good run. The fact that the German champions are the fourth-ranked in a group is testament to just how imperfect these rankings are.

Which Europa League club is most likely to move on?: Werder Bremen just edges out Roma for this one, with both having relatively smooth rides into the knockouts.

Which Europa League third-ranked club is most likely to survive?: Hertha Berlin, almost dead even with group-mate Heerenveen, could upset the Dutch side and move on.

Which Europa League third-ranked club is LEAST likely to survive?: Fulham. The Craven Cottage faithful may want to be prepared for a let down, because the rankings say Roma and Basel will be too much for them.

Who is the biggest longshot of them all?: Surprisingly, not Debrecan, although they come a close second. In terms of the difference between their coefficient and that of the team they’d have to beat out, the least likely to succeed is Sheriff Tiraspol in Europa League group H. If they can get past Steaua Bucharest and Fenerbahce, that will be, by this metric, the surprise of the round.

For those of you who want to see the whole list, here it is. The number in parenthesis is each club’s ranking among competing clubs in terms of raw UEFA coefficients. As always with things like coefficients, it’s best not to take them too seriously, but it’s food for thought. We’ll see how useful this was when the group stages are over.

1 Barcelona (1)
2 Chelsea (3)
3 Liverpool (4)
4 Sevilla (6)
5 Manchester United (2)
6 Arsenal (5)
7 Lyon (11)
8 AC Milan (7)
9 Bayern Munich (8)
10 Werder Bremen (9)
11 Internazionale (12)
12 AS Roma (10)
13 FC Porto (17)
14 Shakhtar Donetsk (15)
15 Real Madrid (14)
16 Hamburger SV (13)
17 Villarreal (16)
18 Rangers (20)
19 Fiorentina (30)
20 Atletico Madrid (32)
21 Ajax (24)
22 Marseille (21)
23 PSV Eindhoven (18)
24 Benfica (19)
25 FC Basel (31)
26 Steaua Bucharest (28)
27 Juventus (25)
28 Fenerbahce (29)
29 Dinamo Kiev (36)
30 CSKA Moscow (23)
31 VfB Stuttgart (37)
32 AZ Alkmaar (33)
33 Bordeaux (34)
34 Valencia (22)
35 Olympiakos (35)
36 Panathinaikos (27)
37 Sporting CP (26)
38 Anderlecht (42)
39 Celtic (40)
40 Club Brugge (45)
41 Everton (38)
42 Galatasaray (39)
43 Lille (41)
44 Besiktas (43)
45 Levski Sofia (50)
46 Copenhagen (44)
47 Austria Wien (60)
48 Heerenveen (47)
49 Hertha Berlin (48)
50 Athletic Bilbao (64)
51 Sparta Prague (51)
52 Lazio (55)
53 VfL Wolfsburg (53)
54 Slavia Prague (46)
55 Nacional Funchal (75)
56 Dinamo Bucharest (49)
57 AEK Athens (52)
58 Toulouse (65)
59 Partizan Belgrade (66)
60 CFR Cluj (63)
61 Hapoel Tel-Aviv (54)
62 FC Salzburg (76)
63 Dinamo Zagreb (68)
64 FC Timisoara (72)
65 Genoa (67)
66 Standard Liege (57)
67 Maccabi Haifa (56)
68 FK Ventspils (79)
69 Unirea Urziceni (69)
70 BATE Borisov (71)
71 Rapid Wien (73)
72 Rubin Kazan (70)
73 FC Twente (59)
74 Fulham (61)
75 CSKA Sofia (62)
76 Sturm Graz (78)
77 FC Zurich (58)
78 APOEL Nicosia (74)
79 DVSC Debrecen (77)
80 Sherif Tiraspol (80)