UEFA ranking changes; Benfica and Sporting 1 point apart | OneFootball

Benfica started the season behind Porto and Sporting in the UEFA club rankings, but qualification for the league phase of the UEFA Europa League allowed the Eagles to close the gap on their rivals. The Lisbon club is now just one point behind Sporting, while the gap to Porto remains slightly larger.

After finishing last season as the top Portuguese club in the rankings, in 14th place, Benfica ended up one spot ahead of Sporting and six above Porto. However, the loss of the points from the 2021/22 season ended up hurting the Eagles and changed the five-year ranking table, which is used to determine the seeded teams in European competition draws.

In the qualifying rounds, the points earned only count toward the country ranking and not the individual club ranking. In Benfica's case, the three points already counted correspond to the minimum guaranteed in the Europa League league phase, even if the team fails to earn any points in that stage.

Those three points, however, are not cumulative. Benfica will only start adding points to their current total once they achieve two wins, one win and two draws, or four draws. According to UEFA’s system, each win is worth two points, while each draw is worth one point.

The same logic applies in the Conference League, with Braga already guaranteed a minimum of 2.500 points in the league phase. In the Champions League, however, the situation is different: the six bonus points earned by Porto and Sporting are added to any other points the two clubs go on to collect throughout the competition.

Watch Benfica's goal in the Europa League:

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.