UEFA coefficients

In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Introduced in 1979, the coefficients are calculated by UEFA, who administer football within Europe.

For men's competitions (discussed in this article), three different sets of coefficients are calculated:

While not discussed in this article, coefficients are calculated in a similar fashion for women's competitions such as the UEFA Women's Euro and the UEFA Women's Champions League, as well as for youth tournaments such as the UEFA Euro U-21 tournament.

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 World Rankings. UEFA stopped using UEFA national team coefficients for the seeding of World Cup qualification groups at the request of FIFA to only use the official FIFA ranking for all seeded draws related to the World Cup tournament.

It was first introduced in 2003 and used for seeding the 2004 European Final tournament and 2006 World Cup qualification. Until the end of the Euro 2008 tournament, the UEFA national team coefficient was calculated by dividing the number of all points scored (three points for a win, one for a draw) by the number of all matches played, in the last two qualification rounds of the World Cup or European Championship. Results from the final tournaments, Play-off matches and friendly games were all ignored. In those cases where a nation did not take part at one of the two latest qualifying rounds, due to being directly qualified as a host, only one qualifying round would be taken into account.

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