{"id":596378,"date":"2026-04-11T05:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T05:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/596378\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T05:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T05:35:11","slug":"what-are-european-stakes-for-scottish-clubs-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/596378\/","title":{"rendered":"What are European stakes for Scottish clubs this season?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The team finishing top of the pile is again scheduled to enter the Champions League play-off needing to win that two-legged tie to reach the 36-team league phase. <\/p>\n

Current leaders Hearts would be unseeded due to their low club coefficient, but Rangers or Celtic would have a good chance of being seeded if they win the title, although that will depend on the other teams involved.<\/p>\n

Then there is a scenario whereby a triumphant Rangers avoid the play-off<\/a> due to something Uefa calls “title-holder rebalancing”.<\/p>\n

If this year’s Champions League winners have also qualified for the league phase via their domestic league, “the club with the best individual coefficient of all the domestic champions involved in qualifying will enter the league phase directly instead of the original round they had qualified for”.<\/p>\n

Liverpool, currently fifth in the Premier League, could mess that up, but they face a difficult quarter-final second leg at home to holders Paris St-Germain, having lost 2-0 in France on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Olympiakos are in front of Rangers in the queue of hopefuls but trail by five points in the Greek Super League.<\/p>\n

Reaching the league phase means eight games among the continent’s elite, while losing the play-off carries the safety net of dropping into the Europa League’s league phase.<\/p>\n

What happened last time?<\/p>\n

Celtic were stunned by Kazakh side Kairat Almaty, losing the play-off on penalties after two dreadful goalless draws. They finished 21st in the Europa League before being beaten in a knockout round play-off by Stuttgart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team finishing top of the pile is again scheduled to enter the Champions League play-off needing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-596378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}