And all quarterfinals are played. We have 5 Spanish teams left. What an overpowering. Too much in my opinion, but apparently there is no team who can stop them.
In the mean time Spanish domestic is also getting more and more interesting. Barcelona is closing in on Real. With a Classico still coming up, Barca could be within 1 point only! Wow. And for the other CL spots, hard fighting is going on. Malaga has jst pushed Valencia back to 4th. I wonder how much effort Valencia will still put in the EL now. A pity.
In other leagues its also interesting. ManUtd seem to have shaken City off. Juve has passed Milan, Wednesday is Dortmund-Munchen, IN France PSG and Montpellier are on the same level on top. Porto has just put Brag back on its pace, and Benfica lost from SPorting, leaving also a little gap to Porto. In Russia Zenit is clear, but behind them all is still possible, In Holland 6 teams are within 5 point, with 6 more matches to play, and in Ukraine Shaktar has come besides Dinamo.
We have thrilling weeks ahead. I will do my best to have more often updates, but with all teams so close every win or loss is of importance and next week all can be different again. Enjoy the ride!
In your EL sheet for next year's qualifiers you should have Liverpool already qualified as they won the League Cup. 7th place will not qualify for EL so Everton should be the team replaced.
This time of year it's always fun to look forward to the new year. Looking at the optimum points for each country I see some countries close to their maximum potential points next year. This year Sweden is sending its highest ranked to Europe, the four teams with most points, Helsingborgs (12.680), Elfsborg (10.180), kalmar (7.180) and AIK (5.680). They couldn;t have picked 4 better teams for being seeded and earning points. How about other countries?
Portugal is forecast to have an amazing total. 2 teams in the 1st pot of the Champions League and one in the second pot as it stands right now. If Sporting Lisbon loses the cup final then Portugal would have their maximum points, because Sporting would still be seeded through to the Europa League group stage, and the cup winner would gain automatic entry to the group stage.
Russia, Turkey and Ukraine also look to have projected point totals very near to their potential maximum.
Holland would be better off with PSV ending up qualifying for the Champions League, although then the cup loser Heracles Almelo would take one of the Europa League places. At 9.103 Heracles Almelo would not be seeded to get into the Europa League. Other than that Holland is set to qualify 5 teams into the group stages, looks like another very good year.
In England I think nobody has mentioned yet that Chelsea is at risk of missing out on Europe altogether next year. Is it right that if Everton wins the cup and Chelsea finish 6th they'll be out? England could have a good year if Chelsea (127.682) get into the Champions League, but a less stellar year if Newcastle (16.682) end up at 4th place, although that's still enough to be seeded into the Europa League group stage.
Spain would be far from maximum potential points next year. Villlareal (79.159) is sure to miss out on Europe if not drop to the second division. Atletico Madrid (90.159) and Sevilla (60.651) could also both miss out. For Spain's best ranking, Valencia would finish 4th and be seeded to go into the Champions League.
Germany is well placed to get a good ranking next year, if Bremen Leverkusen and Stuttgart qualify, but the expected ranking would have been higher with Hamburg.
In Italy the qualified teams would be far from optimal for a high ranking, with Fiorentina (62.966) out, and maybe even Inter (104.996!) Looks like a below average year if Inter makes it into the Europa League and a very poor year if not.
Same for France. Much depends on whether Marseilles can win the League cup and Lyon finish 3rd. If Bordeaux (58.835) and Marseilles (85.835) finish out of Europe and Lyon out of the Champions League it would be a bad year.
Ricardo, would you find it interesting and not too much trouble to calculate for us the maximum potential points for each country if it qualified the highest ranked teams in its league?
I will soon (probably in 2 weeks time) start with next season predicions. Going for the maximum potential is maybe difficult to realise. I mean, how would that be organised. Would the best team(coefficient-wise) be on the lowest CL spot? or on the lowest EL spot(in EL more points can be won). If you think of how to organise that, in what order the teams should be put in a spot, then I could try to do this. Precondition is that all qualified teams have to play in their first-league. order sample: CL4, CL3, CL2, CL1, EL5(FP), EL4, EL3, EL2, EL1????
Good to hear about the next season forecast coming soon. Thanks! I'm curious how high Portugal would be getting next year. Looks astronomical.
Your sample order looks good. It's not clear in each and every case if CL or EL spot would gain more points, but for the sake of simplicity your sample order sounds better, putting the highest coefficient team in the CL.
An easier way to calculate would be to just order the participating from top to bottom, without realizing the exact maximum points but somethng pretty close to it.
One clarification: A country's maximum potential teams would be compared to the current forecast of participating teams and not against all the other countries potential maximum teams. That's the part that may involve a lot of setting up, because it means calculating separately for 53 countries or so.
Mea culpa Ricardo, I' m sorry, of course they are renewed !!! But there is a little mistake. Olympiakos has already secured the title in Greece (7 points lead 2 fixtures to go)!
