Shakhtar earn automatic place in 2024/25 league phase thanks to Champions League rebalancing

Shakhtar Donetsk have secured an automatic place in the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League league phase following Real Madrid's final triumph at Wembley Stadium, the newly crowned European champions having already sealed their berth as La Liga winners.

Last updated at 19:00 CET on Sunday 2 June.

One of the main principles of the new European club competition format post-2024 is the important role of the club coefficient – namely, the club's performance in European competition over the current five-year period.

It is for this reason, from 2024/25 onwards, that should the UEFA Champions League winners have also qualified for the league phase via their domestic league position, the club with the best individual coefficient of all the domestic champions involved in qualifying (the domestic champions of associations 11 to 55*) will enter the league phase directly instead of the original round they had qualified for.

Note that the domestic title winners from associations one to ten will have already automatically qualified for the league phase.

What does this mean in practice?

The top ten coefficients for the league winners from associations 11–55 are as follows:

Shakhtar Donetsk (UKR) – 63.000
Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) – 50.000
Crvena zvezda (SRB) – 40.000
PAOK (GRE) – 37.000
Maccabi Tel Aviv (ISR) – 35.500
Ferencváros (HUN) – 35.000
Young Boys (SUI) – 34.500
Qarabağ (AZE) – 33.000
Galatasaray (TUR) – 31.500
Slovan Bratislava (SVK) – 30.500

The latest five-year club coefficients can be found here.

As Ukrainian Premier League champions, Shakhtar are now guaranteed to take the UEFA Champions League winners' league phase berth. This is because they have the highest coefficient of all the champions from associations 11–55.

Meanwhile, as the team with the highest coefficient among the sides due to contest the second qualifying round, Dinamo Zagreb will now enter qualifying in the play-offs to cover Shakhtar's spot. Likewise, the two teams with the highest coefficient among the sides in the first qualifying round, Ferencváros and Qarabağ, have been promoted to the second qualifying round.

*Note that as Liechtenstein does not have its own domestic league, its clubs play in the Swiss football league system.