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Manchester City and Arsenal are both in the latter stages of the Champions League as they booked their place in the quarterfinals with wins over FC Copenhagen and Porto respectively.
Pep Guardiola’s side have been drawn to face the second favourites of the competition, Real Madrid, meanwhile, the Gunners will take on Bayern Munich.
The semifinal draw has also been mapped out and will Arsenal and City will meet if they each progress.
With both sides all but guaranteed to finish in the top four of the Premier League, which secures them Champions League qualification next season, what would happen if either of them were to win the competition as well?
The Sporting News explains how a fifth-placed team could qualify for next season’s new format Champions League.
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What happens if an English club wins a European trophy?
If a Premier League club were to win the UEFA Champions League, that would see them automatically qualify for the group stage of next season’s competition regardless of their league finishing position.
Given that Arsenal and City have almost certainly clinched a Champions League qualification spot by finishing inside of the top four in the Premier League, it’s more valuable to look at what may happen if they were to win the UCL as well.
The Premier League’s official website states that if a club wins the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League and finishes in the top four of the Premier League, their qualification spot for the UCL through their league position is not transferred to a team that finishes outside of the top four.
However, that does not rule out the possibility of a fifth-place Premier League side playing in the Champions League next year. That’s because of the new format of the tournament, which rewards leagues on sporting merit.
Will fifth in the Premier League qualify for Champions League spot?
As of the start of March 2024, the Premier League has an opportunity to be one of the leagues to benefit from an extra UEFA Champions League spot in 2024/25. That’s because their coefficient ranking is growing stronger as the competitions progress.
UEFA’s data indicates that the European Performance Spots — two of the additional four places in the expanded Champions League, which will be awarded to the leagues with the best coefficients in 2023/24 — will be going to Italy and Germany as things stand. That would mean the fifth-place teams in Serie A and the German Bundesliga would qualify for the 2024/25 Champions League.
This is all to be confirmed as the competitions continue, however. Manchester United and Newcastle United finished bottom of their respective Champions League groups, which dealt a blow to the Premier League’s additional Champions League place.
Borussia Dortmund’s progression to the quarterfinals has boosted Germany’s ranking, but with Napoli and Internazionale’s elimination, Italy’s claim to one of those additional qualification spots has weakened.
Should things change and the Premier League can claim one of the extra places, it would mark the first time since 2005/06 that five English clubs have qualified for the Champions League. That season, it was due to Liverpool winning the 2005 final and finishing fifth in the Premier League with UEFA granting them a ‘champions’ spot.
The opportunity to gain an extra place via the league route depends on the final UEFA coefficient rankings for each European league at the end of 2023/24.
If the Premier League finishes in the top two of UEFA’s final rankings, it will be given an extra place.
UEFA Champions League coefficient: Latest rankings for 2023/24
UEFA’s coefficient rankings will determine which country earns a fifth Champions League qualifying spot next season. The top two will gain one of the extra places.
These were the standings before the Champions League matches on March 6, 2024. They are calculated by taking the country’s coefficient points and dividing them by the number of their teams in UEFA competitions to find an average figure.
This table will be updated when UEFA’s latest rankings are made available after the Round of 16.
2023/24 UEFA club coefficients rankings
| Rank | Country | Av. |
| 1. | Italy | 17.714 |
| 2. | Germany | 16.357 |
| 3. | England | 16.250 |
| 4. | France | 14.750 |
| 5. | Spain | 14.437 |
| 6. | Czechia | 13.250 |
| 7. | Belgium | 13.200 |
*The top two will gain an extra UEFA Champions League place for 2024/25
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