Introduced in 1979, the UEFA Club Coefficients are a method of ranking done by Europe’s football association and are determined by the results of clubs in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League over the previous five seasons, as well as by the coefficient of the clubs' association. The club coefficient is the sum of the points earned by the club over the five seasons plus (20% of the) club's association coefficient.
This is how the points scoring system works –
- The clubs receive two points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a defeat in games of the main stages of the Champions League and the Europa League.
- Results determined after extra-time are included in this method, however, results determined after penalty shoot-outs are not (the result is considered a draw).
You may be wondering what the purpose of the ranking is – It is used by UEFA to determine a club's seeding in club competition draws, including the preliminary and first rounds of the Champions League, and the preliminary, first and second rounds of the Europa League.
While earlier, UEFA used to ensure that strong teams did not meet in the first two rounds of the continental competition, certain changes in the rules were enforced in August last year. These included –
- Clubs will be judged on their own record. The country share of individual club coefficients will be eliminated, except when a club's coefficient is lower than 20% of their country's coefficient.
- Historical results will be considered, using a weighted system that awards points for previous Champions League and Europa League titles.
This is the ranking as of March 2017:
| 2017 | 2016 | Club Name | Total Points |
| 1 | 1 | Real Madrid | 166.371 |
| 2 | 2 | Bayern Munich | 154.842 |
| 3 | 3 | Barcelona | 150.371 |
| 4 | 4 | Atletico Madrid | 136.371 |
| 5 | 9 | Juventus | 131.366 |
| 6 | 7 | Paris Saint-Germain | 125.999 |
| 7 | 8 | Borussia Dortmund | 124.842 |
| 8 | 14 | Sevilla | 112.371 |
| 9 | 6 | Benfica | 111.866 |
| 10 | 5 | Chelsea | 105.878 |
| 11 | 10 | Arsenal | 104.878 |
| 12 | 11 | Manchester City | 99.878 |
| 13 | 16 | Porto | 98.866 |
| 14 | 13 | Schalke 04 | 94.842 |
| 15 | 18 | Bayer Leverkusen | 90.842 |
| 16 | 17 | Napoli | 88.366 |
| 17 | 21 | Shakhtar Donetsk | 87.526 |
| 18 | 15 | Zenit St. Petersburg | 87.106 |
| 19 | 20 | Manchester United | 84.878 |
| 20 | 23 | Tottenham Hotspur | 76.878 |
| 21 | 12 | Valencia | 75.371 |
| 22 | 19 | Basel | 74.415 |
| 23 | 34 | Fiorentina | 68.366 |
| 24 | 26 | Dynamo Kyiv | 67.526 |
| 25 | 24 | Olympiacos | 64.580 |
The top four are unchanged, as Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid remain atop the pile. Meanwhile, what’s really surprising is how poorly the Premier League have fared in recent years.
In fact, the last time a Premier League club topped the charts was way back in 2011 when Manchester United were top dogs. The past three years it’s been Real Madrid, and the other two, Barcelona. Since the inception of the rankings in 1979, Madrid have topped the rankings 12 times while Juventus and Barcelona are joint second with 7.
