Champions League qualifying is a bit complex, so I thought I would outline it here for the one person who asked. I’ll make this short and sweet.
Starting off, you have the preliminary round. This round involves the 4 champions of the associations (effectively countries) ranked 52nd-55th in UEFA. This year, those countries were Montenegro, Iceland, Andorra, and San Marino. Budućnost Podgorica of Montenegro and Breiðablik of Iceland were selected as the two “seeded” teams, meaning they get to play the worse teams in the semifinals. It’s like how American sports work, where they put the #1 and #2 seeds on opposite halves of the bracket so they meet in the finals. They were selected as seeded teams because they had the higher UEFA club coefficient, which is a number generated over 5 years that rates how good the team is. So, those four teams played a single elimination, one-off tournament of 3 games in Iceland, where Breiðablik ended up winning. What does this mean? Well, Breiðablik is off to the first qualifying round, where…
First Qualifying Round:
In the first qualifying round, the 29 champions from associations 22–51 (except Liechtenstein) enter, with the 30th team being the winner of the preliminary round (in this case, Breiðablik). They’re thrown into these groups, separated into seeded and unseeded based on coefficients (good teams are seeded, worse teams are unseeded), and drawn into pairings. So, for example, KÍ of the Faroe Islands was drawn against Ferencváros. KÍ fought to a nil-nil draw in the first leg at home, but then pulled off a monstrous upset in the 2nd leg in Hungary, winning 3–0. Also, Breiðablik became the first team to advance from the preliminary round to the second qualifying round, which is pretty cool.
Second Qualifying Round:
In the second qualifying round, things get a little bit more complicated. You still have your 15 winners from the previous round, but you also add in 5 champions from associations 17–21. Other teams are added as well, in a separate path. It’s not only low-ranking countries’ champions participating in qualifying, but also, higher ranking teams’ runners-up and teams who qualified based on league positioning, even though they didn’t win the league. So, in the second qualifying round, these four runners-up from associations 12–15 are added in their own little group, separate from the rest.
You still get your seeded-vs-unseeded 2-leg ties, and the winners advance. In the league path, there is no final like the preliminary round. Instead, the two winners both move on.
Third Qualifying Round:
At this point, we’re left with:
- 10 winners from the 2nd round Champions Path (that table of 20 teams up there)
- 2 winners form the League Path (the table of 4 teams)
Now, it’s time to add some more teams. Entering this round are 2 champions from association's ranked 15th and 16th. Since we’re probably to the point of familiarity with the teams, this year, they’re going to be AEK Athens and Sparta Prague. Those two go into the champions path, which has the 10 winners, plus those two, making it 12 teams.
The league path adds 6 teams at this stage — 4 runners-up from associations ranked #7-11 (except Russia), and 2 third-placed teams from associations ranked #5–6. All these rankings are done over 5 years, by the way.
In the 12-team champions path, the teams are split into two groups of 6, and they do the same 2 legged format, seeded-vs-unseeded, resulting in 6 winners. The league path does the same thing with its 8 teams, leaving 4 winners.
Play-off Round:
The play-off round is the final round before the group stage. Congratulations! You made it. The league path does not actually add any teams this round. Instead, the 4 remaining teams play in the same two-legged format, and the two winners advance to the Champions League group stage. The Champions Path adds champions from associations 13 and 14 to the mix. The Champions Path uses the same unseeded-vs-seeded two legged format with their 8 remaining teams, with 4 advancing to the Champions League group stage.
Hope this explanation helped. Unfortunately, it won’t be useful next year, since UEFA is expanding the Champions League and making some major changes to the format of their competitions. I’m excited for those changes, but for now, I hope this can clear some things up.
