Friday, January 27, 2012

2013 UEFA Under-21 play-off seeding

The coefficients for the 2013 UEFA European Under-21 Championship playoff draw will take into account results from:

2009 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (qualifiers and final tournament) - 20% of total weighting
2011 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (qualifiers and final tournament) - 40% of total weighting
2013 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (qualifiers) - 40% of total weighting

More info about the Under-21 coefficient on UEFA.com (PDF file).

As mentioned before, I think there's a mistake in the regulations regarding the qualification points for teams that have hosted one of the last two final tournaments.

For Sweden (hosts of the 2009 final tournament) I used the 2011 qualification results (as in the regulations), while for Denmark (hosts of the 2011 final tournament) I used the 2009 qualification results, since I couldn't use the 2011 qualification results as in the regulation.

For the play-off draw, the seven group winners with the best coefficients will be seeded. Israel as hosts are already qualified. Their coefficient is 30302, good enough for 6th in the ranking.

Current standings available on UEFA.com.

Rank - Team - Points

1 Spain              36715
 2 Italy              31383
 3 Germany            31183
 4 England            30925
 5 Switzerland        30434
 6 Czech Republic     30125
 7 France             29392
 8 Russia             29222
 9 Netherlands        29074
10 Sweden             28861
11 Turkey             27342
12 Serbia             26819
13 Belarus            26678
14 Wales              25871
15 Scotland           25684
16 Romania            25585
17 Greece             25431
18 Denmark            24809
19 Croatia            24771
20 Austria            24552
21 Belgium            24426
22 Portugal           24326
23 Slovakia           24189
24 Ukraine            23279
25 Montenegro         23039
26 Finland            22306
27 Iceland            22158
28 Armenia            21631
29 Slovenia           20378
30 Poland             20201
31 Norway             19989
32 Moldova            19671
33 Hungary            19388
34 Bosnia-Herzegovina 18856
35 Georgia            18561
36 Ireland            18471
37 Northern Ireland   18364
38 Latvia             17646
39 Bulgaria           17538
40 Cyprus             16561
41 Albania            16046
42 Macedonia          15513
43 Estonia            15410
44 Faroe Islands      15085
45 Kazakhstan         14563
46 Lithuania          13370
47 Azerbaijan         12401
48 Malta              12043
49 Luxembourg         10963
50 Andorra             9356
51 Liechtenstein       8563
52 San Marino          7790

Using Wikipedia to determine the best second-placed teams, this is how the pots would look now:

Pot 1

Spain          36715
Italy          31383
Germany        31183
England        30925
Czech Republic 30125
France         29392
Russia         29222

Pot 2

Switzerland *  30434
Netherlands    29074
Turkey *       27342
Serbia         26819
Slovakia *     24189
Montenegro *   23039
Slovenia       20378

* - second placed teams

About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.

4 comments:

  1. What would Israel's coefficients would be?

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  2. Personally I think this isn't the method that should be used for U21 teams, the main reason being that 2009 teams have zero connection to 2013 ones. (Even 2011 squads would have just a few same players at most). Basically, every team's ranking will be affected by the performance of completely unrelated team from 4 years ago (squad-wise). I'd like to see UEFA incorporating the results of U19 teams from a few years ago into that ranking somehow. This would make more sense as this would be the same people, just younger.

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  3. @ Anonymous

    I prefer it this way. The U19 (and U17) tournaments are so luck based in the qualifying stages, it would surely skew the results. I would guess more so than the current system.

    The teams might not have much in common player-wise year on year, but it should at least be semi-accurate. You wouldn't expect a country to produce wildly different squads from one cycle to the next.

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