Question about soccer, related to FM
 

As I understand it, only 3 teams out of the English Preimer League make it to the Uefa Champions League, correct? But isn't possible for a fourth team to make it in? Or am I completely wrong?

I don't think so..Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal are all in the Knockout Stages (the "Sweet Sixteen" of the tournment) of this year's League.

How many European countries are in the FM 2005 game?

The number of teams a league can send is based on a ranking system. So the stronger leagues (Premeire, Serie A, Bundesliga, etc.) can send more teams than the weaker divisions, like Switzerland, Portugal, etc. So the number of teams a league can send varies on how they rank strengthwise against the other national leagues.

2 get automatic qualification, and the other 2 (possibly more or less based on league strength) get to participate in varying stages of the qualifying rounds.

Any information to find this? I look at www.uefa.com, but it doesn't give the specifics, just how the format works.

Sorry - its based on knowledge. though if you look on the site, it does detail qualification rounds for the Champions League, and how losers end up in the UEFA cup. Essentialy, there's the Champions League- and then everything else.

http://www.uefa.com/competitions/UCL...Id=268457.html

Alright, I found it.

Does FM 2005 do this, have the rankings system and change it year-to-year, and follow this format?

Yep. I forget where it is, but you can see the ranking of the leagues on one of the screens.

Yes. It's under UEFA Co-efficents, where it lists the point totals and the number of teams that qualify for the Champions league, UEFA Cup, and whatever the Inter-toto is now called.

Dola.

I think it is under the Europe pull down menu.

Now,
Are they locked in in terms of each "ranking" gets a certain amount of bids, regardless of what country holds that position?
Also, does it update each certain time of year, and when does it update to be used for the upcoming season's UEFA tournaments?

I guess it wasn't that stupid of a question

Anyone know where to find the rankings?

In the Europe pull down menu, click on the top thing listed, and then look on the left (or right) handed menu bar.

As far as I know, the number of bids is locked to the rank.

It does update the rankings at the beginning of the season when I play in the EPL. You usually get a news item about it (or at least I did when I was playing Liverpool).

In real-life they update the co-efficients once a year after the competitions have completed, in FM the update date is the 30th of June - I don't think the real-life date of this has ever been made public what it is irl, you know its been 'done' when the draws for the cups are completed.

In real life, the rankings after the 2004/2005 season affect the entries for the 2006/2007 UEFA competitions, meaning the 2005/2006 national season decided who will make it. I think it's safe to assume FM is representing that correctly.

What makes the whole system a schizo-problem for the fans is that they tend to root against other teams from the same country, even though good results are better for their own team's chances to qualify for Europe.

Really? I though the says that it is when the rankings are updated, that are used for that coming season using last year's results. So, Portugals one automatic bid for this year's tournament in the Champions League will become two, taking over Greece's two automatic bids in this year's tournament Group Phase in next year's competition based on rankings put out before the season. However, this year's results determine those results, as Porto and Benfica (if the season ended today), would get Portugal's automatic bids and Greece's would send current leader Olympiacos to next's year Group Phase automatically. Sorry if it sounds confusing. Do the defending champions of any of the tournaments get automatic bids to each tournament (unless they qualify for a higher-level one), and if so, does the bids of that country get pushed down, or does that bid get thrown out ?

How are the rankings figure? What is the formula? So, the Champions League, UEFA Cup and the Interlolo Cup are kinda like the NCAA's basketball tournament, you have a number of conferences (or countries in this case), and each conference gets to send its tournament champion (or in this case, the top team in the league), and at-large teams. Of course, the higher the conferences, the more teams they'll send.

It will be strange if Liverpool can't catch Everton in the Premiership. Liverpool out of the Champions League, and Everton in it.

Lot of questions, let's see which I can answer.
I think it's designed so leagues and teams know in advance which final ranking will qualify you for the CL and which for the UEFA Cup. At the start of the season each national league knows who will go where (which cup) and which round (round one, first preliminaries).

The formula is not too complex, but not too easy either. Wins are worth 2 points, draws one point. Teams get bonus points for reaching certain rounds (last 8, final 4, final) and preliminairy rounds points are half. Then all the points scored by teams from one country are added up and devided by the number of teams. This gives the score of that season.

I said, the 2003/2004 scores are counting for 2005/2006 spots, but in fact it goes from the previous 5 seasons, so 1999/2000-2002/2003 are also counting.

Exactly.
But to make it more complicated, the first (some times first two) UEFA Cup tickets are going to winners of national knock-out tournaments, rather than the usual league tables.

I hope I'm not confusingyou even more now.

Are the rankings based on just the UEFA's three tournaments, the points. (Anywhere to find this?). Also, the the rankings are based on the last five seasons? Not sure what you mean the first and second tickets of the UEFA CUp are given to the winners of the national knock-out tournaments. Do the higher "rated" (countries that have the higher ranking) teams get home-field throughout the first three rounds of the Champions League, and the home-field in single leg matches

http://www.mycgiserver.com/~bertuefa/index.html
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~bertuefa/index.html#crank

For example, the winner of the English FA Cup gains an automatic berth in the UEFA Cup (second tier tourney). What this does is knock the other teams in the qualifying spots down a level. So if 5th-7th place normally would have gotten UEFA Cup spots, now only 5-6 do. So you still end up with 3 teams qualifying.

There are no single leg matches until the finals in any of the UEFA tournaments. The finals are played at a pre-selected neutral stadium. Everything else is based on the home-away format. Who plays at home first in a home-away is purely luck of the draw.

Ok, I think I got it now.
Reading over that what site, what is the idea behind "seeding". Why are some teams seeded, and the others non-seeded.

Be even stranger if Liverpool with the Champions League this year and Everton finish above them in the Premiership .... then Liverpool will be in the CL and Everton out ....

Here's another site that is very helpful. I think it is actually easier to understand that UEFA's own website.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/

Darn, I just noticed Sundancer beat me to it.

As much as I'm a Liverpool supporter...that's just not going to happen.

How good is Everton? They don't seem to have the level of prestige or wealth of the "Big 4", though a CL apperance would be would bring an infusion of money.

As the saying goes - the league table doesn't lie. They definitley deserve to be in 4th place and are my favourites to grab the 4th CL spot. However, they are still a fair bit behind the big three (Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea) talent wise and will need a few years of consistent european qualificiation in order to catch up with them.

They have a decent amount of cash in the bank after the Wayne Rooney sale last summer that netted them around 27 million pounds. I don't think they spent a substantial amount of that in the winter transfer window. They have a large fan base and actually were very successful in the 70s and 80s. So it's not unrealistic to expect them to be near the top of the table. If anything you could say they've been underperforming the past decade or so.

Kinda like Liverpool hasn't been the same since it's days of domination in 70's and 80s, though they haven't slipped really (still competitive in the Premier and UEFA/English tournaments). Just seem not able to generate the cash flow of the bigger 3 clubs (United, Chelsea, and Aresenal)

How are the other teams, financially and prestige wise, in the Premiership?

Everton were always the big team in Merseyside until Shankly and Paisley came along and altered the Scouse football landscape somewhat. There used to be a big 6 talked about in the 80s: Arsenal, Tottenham, Man U, Liverpool, Everton and Villa - from the size of the clubs and regular success

Now we have the big 3: Arsenal, Man U & Chelsea who came from a prolonged period of relative obscurity to where they are today, with a couple just behind them of Liverpool and Newcastle. If Everton do finish 4th they can break into the B level again, but they're a long way from the top 3.

Football's cyclical, always has been: like the NFL but up and down periods can last 10-20 years or so as opposed to the 2-3 years of cap hell/rebuilding. So while Spurs and Villa are now seen as sleeping giants, while these last few years are the first time in my life that Liverpool have been a relative non-factor...

(notice a couple of uses of the word 'relative': as a Leicester fan our best recent years were the equivalent of Liverpool's current slump!)

Thanks for the insight. Though, the NFL and European soccer are differnet financial structures. How successful was Chelsea before the Russain billionaire bought it?

What happen to Liverpool's slide? They seem to have a "brand", but can't play with the "Big Three" as much as they use to. Will the new stadium they are building help get them back up to that level?

IIRC, Chelsea was in debt hell before Abromovich purchased them, and there was great fear that they'd end up relegated soon because they couldn't afford their Premiership wages and would need large transfer fees because of the debt (kind of like Leeds).

Chelsea have won a few cups, but only won the league once in their history: and that was in 1955. Traditionally they're a flair team that has provided great footballing sides, but never had the consistency to win league titles, but have had a shot in the cup competitions. Having said that, if you ever meet 'Chopper' Harris don't try and tell him he was a flair player, and they did spend a large portion of the eighties in the division below the top flight...

Isn't Abromovich's wealth pretty suspect, as well as his long-term interest in the club?

His wealth is definitely suspect. Rumors are that he is wanted dead by some in Russia. It would be hard to see him leaving Chelsea before they start turning a profit though.

The word is that he's well in with Putin so the investigations that might reveal the corruption that is part of his wealth will not take place - at least at this time :rolleyes:

I'm not really knowledable about Russia's economy and the business environment, expect that its pretty unstable and that the transaction from state to free-market, private ownership is not going well.

Why do some want him dead?

Maybe some competing oil tycoon wants him out of the business. One of the main problems in Russia is the fact that its basically an oligarchy. The government is at the disposal of powerful oil tycoons and other businessmen. Kind of like here in America but on a larger and much more extreme scale.

Throw in organized crime on the scale of the Prohibition Era in America, and you probably have the reason why some want him dead.

Yeah, but as long as he's alive and controls his oligarchically owned companies, he's estimated at $8 billion (yes, billion).

And he's not going back to Russia anytime soon.

After a meger between his oil company and another Russian oil company, to basically create a monopoly of Russian oil, he is probably worth closer to $15bn and is the richest man in Russia now. Well, not in Russia, as he spends most of his time in England, but anyway....

Isn't he moving alot of his money and accounts out of Russia and into England/Swizterland, ect?

I'd be suprised if most of his money wasn't in a Swiss bank account already!

I know he has a bunch of bodyguards following him around. I forget where I saw it, but there was some article about Chelsea that mentioned that there might be a contract out on him.

Russian business these days eclipses the mafia. There's a story breaking this morning here in Oz that the company building the new Wembley stadium has received a ransom threat for $50 million. If not paid then snipers will start picking off construction workers at the company's sites around the world. It's believed a Russian crime syndicate is behind it :rolleyes: