This season was the first season Ajax got past the CL group stage in donkey's years - or, to put it another way, Zenit winning the Europa League in 2008 is more than Ajax have achieved since the 1990s
I don't think it goes back over a decade, though. I'm pretty sure that Ukrainian sides have got through the groups more often in the last five years. The last 16 has been dominated by England, Spain, Germany and Italy in that time. Portugal appear to be next in line, so I really don't get Russia's place.
Europa League performance counts nearly as highly as CL performance in calculating the coefficients. You also get more points by winning all the group matches than by scraping through and then winning the tournament! The Dutch are not in the top 11 nations over five years so get no automatic qualifiers however well they did this year.
That would explain it. Lokomotiv getting drawn in a group with Copenhagen, Sheriff Tiraspol and Fastav Zlin would do wonders for their coefficient. Zenit facing AZ, Macabbi Tel Aviv and Dundalk would, too. It's funny to think that it's worth more points than us getting through a group with Real, Inter and PSV, though! How are the Dutch out of the top 11 nations, though? That's mad. Spain, England, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Portugal, Belgium, Ukraine, Turkey and Austria, if anyone's wondering. Cyprus (16th) are above Greece (17th), too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_coefficient#Club_coefficient CL and EL rankings have near parity over the entire tournament. As I have said, no surprises this happened as the likelihood of UEFA darlings not qualifying for the CL has increased. If an EL team matches the W/D/L count of a CL team in the group stages, they will be 1 pt worse off at the end. To reach the last 16, an EL team will be an extra 1-4 pts worse off (depending on the results of the round of 32 ties) .
Pirlo knows a thing or two: http://www.spursism.com/they-didnt-...-two-spurs-players-who-went-missing-in-final/
Bayern, Celtic and Copenhagen would be my ideal group (if the latter two make it). Bayern and PSG are the only two giants we’ve yet to face. An English-Scottish matchup would be fire and I’d consider travelling out to Denmark for the Copenhagen game if I can get a ticket as I wanna do a little tour of Scandinavia soon.
If we draw Copenhagen, will anyone ask the locals if they think saying they'd move to N17 if they couldn't get a house in Madrid sounds complimentary?
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