This is one of the major challenges for French football this season: to maintain its fifth place in the UEFA index and thus be sure to send four clubs (including three directly to the “League phase”, which will replace the current phase of groups) in the new formula of the Champions League in 2024-2025. For this, the French representatives, who before the start of the knockout stages had a total of 59.497 points (cumulative for the last five seasons), must resist the return of their Dutch rivals (56.700 points) and Portuguese (53.716 points).
After the first leg matches of the round of 16 of C1 and the play-offs of C3 and C4, the results are not extremely reassuring, but the eliminations of PSV Eindhoven and Ajax Amsterdam, this Thursday evening in the Europa League, could have provoked some relief.
PSG and Nice to repel the Netherlands and Portugal
Despite PSG’s defeat against Bayern last week, then Nantes, Monaco and Rennes going off the road, France (60.331 points) still has a 3.031 point lead over the Netherlands (57.300), and 5.615 over the Portugal (54,716).
Spring promises to be hot, however, and could shape a different future depending on the performance of Paris (C1) and Nice (C4) on the one hand, the Benfica (C1) – Porto (C1) – Sporting (C3) trio and the tandem Feyenoord (C3) – AZ Alkmaar (C4) on the other.
