UEFA update provides welcome boost for Liverpool ahead of Champions League return | OneFootball

Liverpool fans haven’t had the best of relationships with UEFA in recent years, particularly after the events of Paris in 2022, but European football’s governing body has provided the Reds with some good news on Friday.

The organisation’s website has published updated club coefficients for the 2024/25 season, and the new figures show that Arne Slot’s side have risen one place to fourth in the overall ranking (up one place from 12 months ago), with only Manchester City, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich ahead of them.

The system is used for determining the hierarchy of seedings for competitions such as the Champions League, in which LFC will play during the upcoming campaign after missing out on the 2023/24 edition.

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Despite the disappointment of exiting the Europa League at the quarter-final stage in April, Liverpool still progressed far enough in the competition to bolster their UEFA coefficient.

While understanding the exact formulae behind the calculation of the rankings – which are applied over a five-year period with an increasingly heavier weighing towards recency – can be complex, the simple takeaway is that this should theoretically help the Reds in future European campaigns.

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It has become even more significant following UEFA’s revamp of its club tournaments, where the ranking of each team is the primary determinant for which seeding pot they’ll enter when the draws are being made.

Under the previous Champions League format, the winners of the main two continental competitions and the top six (or seven) domestic champions were seeded in Pot 1.

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Therefore, if Liverpool came second in the top flight and didn’t win a European trophy, they’d be second seeds despite having a higher coefficient than some of the highest-seeded clubs.

The Reds would still need to defeat a high calibre of opposition to get to the Champions League final, of course, but their consistently strong performances in Europe under Jurgen Klopp have – theoretically at least – done Arne Slot a favour for his first season in charge at Anfield.

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