Celtic and Scottish football as a whole are in line to benefit from UEFA’s recent sanctions on Russian football, with the organisation banning teams who play in the Russian Premier League from playing in their competitions due to the countries invasion of Ukraine.
The winner of this season’s Scottish Premiership were already in prime position to secure a spot in the Champions League group stages but now with UEFA banning Russian teams participation, it’s almost a certainty.
Before they were sanctioned there was only one representative from Russia left in UEFA’s tournaments this season. Spartak Moscow have now been thrown out of the Europa League as UEFA takes a tough stance following other sports who have implemented similar measures.
Russia will be expelled from the coeficiant table meaning Scotland will lose one of its biggest rivals in trying to secure a top ten position. Scotland currently sit in ninth place in UEFA’s coefficient rankings. Scotland sit on 34.900 points and hold a 0.418 point gap over Russia in tenth spot.
With such a small margin between the two nations, it was pretty much a straight fight for ninth spot.
However, Serbia who currently sit in eleventh spot with 32.875 points, cannot be ruled out. They still have two sides, Red Star Belgrade and city rivals Partizan Belgrade, involved in European competitions. Red Star Belgrade face theRangers in the last 16 of the Europa League while Partizan Belgrade wil face Feyenoord in the same competition Celtic exited just last week, the UEFA Conference League.
Serbian teams are rewarded with 0.5 points for every win in Europe compared to Scotland’s 0.4 points. This means that if Red Star can beat theRangers twice and Partizan can claim victory in both legs against the Dutch giants, then they would overtake the Scots with bonus points taken into account.
If Scotland can maintain their position, and with Russia now expelled they should, it would mean that the runners up in the Scottish League would enter the non-champions path of the Champions League at the third-round qualifying phase. This would mean that group stage European football is guaranteed until Christmas in either the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League.
Scotland will also have a representative in the Europa League in the play-off round stage for the winner of the Scottish Cup, making it a huge prize for the teams outside of Glasgow, while two other clubs will enter the second and third qualifying stages of the Conference competition.
Disregarding Celtic and theRangers, the incentives are huge for the other side’s in the top half of the Premiership this season. The higher they can finish the more chance they have of landing a lucrative run in Europe, although their past form in trying to qualify for these competitions doesn’t bode well.
In Celtic’s case this update just proves how crucial winning the league is this season, and it will hopefully put an end to all the scaremongering around the team that wins the league this season not getting that golden ticket to the Champions League group stages after all. Funny how them stories only appeared after we went top of the league, wasn’t it?
Conall McGinty
