Next season will bring, for Portugal, a decrease in participants in UEFA’s main club competition. After the title and the previous sentence, you might only think that this article is a mistake on our part, but no. Everything is fine, although the most likely, by far, is the reduction to two Portuguese teams in the competition (or just one, if the second fails to make it through the qualifiers).
Let us, therefore, explain the rationale in question. It is certain that Portugal will go from three to two teams in the next Champions League, which was determined by the ranking closed at the end of last season (currently, Portugal remains in seventh place, which assumes that 2025/26 will also repeat this). One of them, the national champion, qualifies directly, the other, which is second in this Liga Portugal Betclic, enters the qualifying rounds.
Therefore, the scenario is not encouraging. But there are still two ways (highly unlikely, but not impossible) for Portugal to add team(s) to the next Champions League.
First, if FC Porto wins the current competition and comes in third place, or below, in the Portuguese championship. The winner of the millionaire competition is guaranteed access to the next edition, even if their internal success does not allow it. Still, it is worth noting that, if they win the championship and Champions League, this does not allow Portugal to have another team – whoever wins it is the fifth placed team in the ranking (?). The same will happen if one of the teams in the Europa League wins that competition and falls outside the top two places in Portugal. Here, there could be three teams in the next million-dollar league, if whoever makes it to the preliminary rounds is successful.
Then, Portugal would have to be one of the two best in the 2023/24 annual ranking, which is the same as saying that the teams still in the competition would have to have superb campaigns for this to still happen. The problem is that Portugal is just the 11th classified of the time, so it would have to be something superlative, such as, for example, three of the four teams still in Europe (FC Porto, Benfica, Sporting and SC Braga) reaching at least the semi-finals of the competitions – and, Even then, it would depend on the performances of other countries to still reach one of the top two places in the ranking.
A scenario that guaranteed the four Portuguese teams in the next millionaire league (read the format here) was this: FC Porto as winner of the Champions League (placing at most fourth in the championship) and one of the other three teams winning the Europa League.
And five teams? Yes, it works too
Since the exercise is merely theoretical and sparse in probabilities, we narrowed it down a little further to find a rationale in which five Portuguese teams would be in the next edition of the Champions League.
Then, in addition to FC Porto winning the Champions League (and off the podium in the championship), the Europa League winning team would have to be in fifth place in the Portuguese League (or below), which would allow access to third place .
In practical terms, and looking realistically at the current classification, Vitória SC will be third, ahead of FC Porto (winner of the Champions League) and SC Braga (winner of the Europa League – much more improbable). ¡vel after this Thursday’s home defeat).
Football is so full of surprises that it led us to this theoretical exercise. We’ll be back soon with exercises that are closer to reality.
2024-02-16 09:54:00
#Portuguese #teams #Champions #League #little.. #zerozero.pt
