I’m preparing for the UEFA Women’s Champions League First Qualifying draw , and my head hurts.
We enter at the first qualifying stage, so there’s still a long way to go before the group stage proper (more on the structure of the whole thing later).
The qualifying stages are split into two sections, the “Champions Path” and the “League Path”, like the men’s tournament. In practical terms, that means one half of the process is reserved for national champions, like us, and the other half accommodates teams which qualified by virtue of a high league position but didn’t win the league. There is no other Welsh team in that half of the draw because Wales has a very low coefficient and therefore only has one spot in the competition.
Then, the “Champions Path” has been split into two halves. Still with me? As far as I can work out, the reason for this is political: Armenia and Azerbaijan don’t get along, so their teams have to be kept apart, so Armenian champions FC Pyunik and Neftçi PFK of Azerbaijan (both of whom are seeded), are put in separate halves of the process.
So far so good! That narrows down our possibilities – we could draw the following teams:
Seeded
Athlone Town (Ireland)
KKS Czarni Sosnowiec (Poland)
FC Pyunik (Armenia)
Glentoran (Northern Ireland)
Spartak Myjava (Slovakia)
Tallinna Flora (Estonia)
Unseeded
Mġarr United (Malta)
Riga (Latvia)
Nike (Georgia)
ŽFK Skopje 2014 (North Macedonia)
We’ll be put into a group of either four or three teams, with the winner progressing to the second qualifying round. There’s a two in three chance we’ll be in a group of four. That will mean that, as we’re unseeded, we’ll be drawn against one of the seeds for the group semi-final. The other semi-final will be between a seeded and unseeded team.
As there’s an odd number of teams in this round, one group will have three in it, and we’re in the half of the draw which will contain that group. If we’re in the three, we’ll be drawn with two seeded teams: we’ll play the semi-final against the seed with the lower coefficient, with the other getting a bye to the final.
Should we go through we’ll be in the second qualifying round, and that will be drawn today too. This is where you start to come across sides who are rather more familiar. We’d be an unseeded side again, as will the following:
Hearts (Scotland)
PSV Eindhoven (The Netherlands)
Fenerbahçe (Turkey)
HJK Helsinki (Finland)
ŽFK TSC Bačka Topola (Serbia)
The other two group winners from our half of qualifying round 1.
The seeds are as follows.
Apollon (Cyprus)
Gintra (Lithuania)
Metalist 1925 Kharkiv (Ukraine)
HB Køge (Denmark)
KFF Vllaznia (Albania)
OH Leuven (Belgium)
Racing Union Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
SFK 2000 Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
The groups work in exactly the same way as the first qualifying round, and by this point UEFA have got the number of teams down to be a number divisible by four, so there’ll be no lop-sided groups!
And if we win that group we’re into the Champions League proper? Well, no, not yet! We’d then be into the final qualifying round, with the other seven group winners and Sparta Prague, who have a bye to that section. This will be a traditional two-legged affair, and the winner finally makes its way to the Champions League. Easy – we’re virtually through!
Anyway, let’s get back to the games we definitely will be playing. Each group in the first qualifying round will be hosted in one venue, to be decided by the participants after the draw. I understand that we want to be hosts and you suspect we will do so. After all, teams at this stage of the competition will fancy playing at an impressive international stadium (I’m told it’s the oldest in the world!) in the famous Wrexham, as seen on TV!
How likely are the other clubs in our part of the draw to want to be hosts?
Spartak Myjava, Mitrovica and Athlone all hosted a group last season.
Glentoran play at the historic Oval in Belfast, conveniently located right next to the domestic airport, which is named after George Best! Virtually a home game! Theoretically, it holds 26,000, but its capacity is 5,300 as it isn’t in the best condition!
Nike play at the stadium below, which looks decent,
Sosnowiec’s ground holds 1,000 with 400 seats.
Stadium Myjava holds 2,700 and looks neat!
Flora play in a sports complex in Tallinn: there are three pitches and this is the main stadium, which holds 1,200.
Whether you realise it or not, you’ve reached the point in your life when you want to see a hairy man standing in Athlone’s 3,000 capacity stadium. If you’ve also got to the stage where you’ll be disappointed if he doesn’t share his name with a major commercial fishery, then you’re really in look. Here’s John West.
Mġarr United seem highly unlikely to be putting themselves forward as hosts: they’re based in a remote rural location in the north of Malta. Infrastructure’s not great outside Valletta – I’ve been to the nearest big town, Mosta, and it took longer than you’d expect to get there.
Skopje don’t appear to play in anything bigger than small local stadia, if that, while Pyunik won a huge trophy as league champions. They appear to play in Pyunik’s main stadium, which holds 13,000.
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