UEFA has altered the Europa League qualifying process again, creating a double-edged sword for Celtic, Hearts and Rangers. From next season, the final qualifying round, or playoff round, will be split into champions and non-champions paths.
New qualifying structure
The Premiership champions will enter the second qualifying round of the Champions League, while the runners-up and third-place teams will enter the same stage of the Conference League. The Scottish Cup winners will enter the first qualifying round of the Europa League, unless they have already qualified via their league position, in which case the league runners-up would take that spot—either way, they would be in the non-champions path.
If the Europa League entrants reach the playoff round, the split makes things harder. They would not be able to play teams dropping out of Champions League qualifying, which this season included Iberia 1999, Kairat Almaty and Ararat. The coefficient of the two big clubs has dropped to a level making them unlikely to be seeded in the Europa League non-champions playoff draw, and any other Scottish club would definitely be unseeded.
Seeding implications
This season, they would have faced Anderlecht, Benfica or Viktoria Plzen. However, if the champions drop into the Europa League playoff round from the Champions League, they would be seeded and protected from drawing the highest-ranked teams in the non-champions path.
Celtic missed out on Champions League football this season by surrendering a four-goal first-leg lead to LASK and dropped into the Europa League. Rangers exited Europe altogether after Europa League and Conference League defeats to Jagiellonia Bialystok and Jablonec respectively. Hearts tumbled from the Champions League qualifiers to the Europa League, losing to Sturm Graz in the former and Benfica in the latter before beating Rapid Vienna in the Conference League playoff. Motherwell and Hibs were both eliminated in the playoff round by Freiburg and Gent respectively.
