ENGLAND<\/p>\n
Even though four teams have been knocked out this week, it is all but certain that the Premier League will get an extra place. <\/p>\n
England (23.847) already have a coefficient score pretty much the same as last season’s second-placed country (Spain, 23.892).<\/p>\n
Nothing should be completely taken for granted, as England seemed destined to get an EPS slot in 2023-24 only to suffer a terrible set of results in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
But it is going to take another very bad night on Thursday for there to be any real jeopardy.<\/p>\n
It also helps that Bayern Munich will face Real Madrid in the quarter-finals, meaning one of England’s closest rivals will lose a team. And Barcelona must play Atletico Madrid, too.<\/p>\n
As a picture of how far England are ahead, German and Spanish sides are effectively 18 victories behind. And Serie A can no longer catch the Premier League.<\/p>\n
SPAIN<\/p>\n
The Spanish league is in second place and now has more teams left in Europe (six) than any other league.<\/p>\n
It will be a close battle as each win is worth less to the coefficient than for Germany. <\/p>\n
The Champions League meeting between Bayern and Real Madrid could prove crucial in the race. <\/p>\n
Spain will also be hit by their teams meeting each other.<\/p>\n
Atletico and Barcelona will meet in the Champions League quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
In the Europa League, Celta Vigo and Real Betis are on a collision course in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
GERMANY<\/p>\n
The Bundesliga has only Bayern left active in the Champions League, and it will need a strong turnaround of results on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Of the three German teams in action in the Europa League and Conference League, not one goes into their second leg with a lead. They all need positive results to be able to challenge Spain.<\/p>\n
PORTUGAL<\/p>\n
It seemed like Portugal’s chances of making the top two were effectively over when Santa Clara were knocked out of the Conference League in the qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n
But three of their remaining four teams are still active.<\/p>\n
However, to be in contention for second all are going to have to go very deep.<\/p>\n
ITALY<\/p>\n
Serie A has lost four of its seven teams and now only has a slim chance of making second place.<\/p>\n
Bologna and Roma face each other in the Europa League last 16, so another team will go out. <\/p>\n
At least Fiorentina won in the Conference League.<\/p>\n
FRANCE<\/p>\n
It has been a disappointing season for Ligue 1 teams, starting with Nice’s failure to make it through Champions League qualifying.<\/p>\n
It did not get much better from there for Nice, as they were then eliminated from the Europa League. <\/p>\n
France do have four teams still active but seem unlikely to bridge the gap.<\/p>\n
POLAND<\/p>\n
It will come as a surprise to many to find Poland so high up in the table, and they were in the top two for a while. But Poland no longer have a realistic chance.<\/p>\n
All four of the country’s teams have been playing in the Conference League, while more than a third of their coefficient points were picked up in the qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n
It would need both of their teams to win every remaining game.<\/p>\n
No other country has a mathematical chance of the top two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ENGLAND Even though four teams have been knocked out this week, it is all but certain that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-483489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}