UEFA coefficient

In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions.The coefficients are calculated by UEFA, who administer football within Europe. It uses three different coefficients to rank the national teams, the national league, and football clubs.

National team coefficient

The UEFA national team coefficient is derived from the results of each European national football team, and only calculated by UEFA every second year in November; defined as being the point of time when all UEFA nations have completed the qualification stage of the upcoming World Cup or European Championship tournament.

The purpose of calculating the coefficients is to compile an official UEFA rank, to be used as seeding criteria for the European nations, when drawing up qualification groups and the final tournament groups of the European Championship. Previously, up until 2006, the UEFA national team coefficient was also used for the seeded draw of World Cup qualification groups in Europe, while the draw for final tournament groups of the World Cup was always seeded on the basis of the official FIFA ranking. The reason why UEFA stopped using UEFA national team coefficients for the seeding of World Cup qualification groups was a request from FIFA to only use the official FIFA ranking for all seeded draws related to the World Cup tournament.

Throughout the history of international football, the seeding criteria for the big tournaments...
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