Premier League one win away from securing extra Champions League spot

Despite Liverpool's elimination in the round of 16 of the Champions League, this week's results in the Europa League and Conference League have been the definitive backing for the Premier League's bid for an extra place in the top club competition.

After Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea all progressed to the quarter-finals, it is safe to say that the English will enjoy one of the two extra places up for grabs in 2025-26. A news that brings some relief for Manchester City, which currently occupies the 5th position in the table and is ahead of Chelsea (+2), Nottingham Forest (+4) and Arsenal (+8), in addition to Liverpool (+23), but feels the breath of Newcastle (same points), Brighton (-1), Aston Villa (-2) or Bournemouth (-3).

The allocation of this extra place is not mathematical for now, but it can be taken for granted unofficially. For the British to lose it, the 3 Italian clubs still alive in the competitions (Inter, Lazio and Fiorentina) would have to win the tournament and the English clubs would have to be eliminated in this round and also lose all their matches.

The current coefficient in this academic year 2024-25 of the 7 English clubs that have participated in European competition is 24,250, while La Liga is the second competition for now with 21,678. The Spaniards suffered Thursday's elimination of Real Sociedad and could be on more points if Girona had performed better in their Champions League debut. Serie A appears in third place with 19,937 and is the last country with real options to take an extra team to the Champions League 2025-26, as the Bundesliga has 17,921 and is only still in contention thanks to mathematics.

Back to Italy's chances of having as in 2024-25 a fifth team in the top club competition next year, it must be said that the Italians only have the aforementioned teams in contention, but must still divide their points among the 8 they had in Europe in the current academic year. LaLiga has one more club alive, 4, and also only divides its points between 7, so the options of the 'Calcio' are already minimal after the elimination of Roma in the Europa League.