{"id":29309,"date":"2026-05-09T13:41:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/premier-league-wsl-efl-scottish-football-ups-downs-european-qualification-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T13:41:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:41:37","slug":"premier-league-wsl-efl-scottish-football-ups-downs-european-qualification-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/premier-league-wsl-efl-scottish-football-ups-downs-european-qualification-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League, WSL, EFL, Scottish football: Ups, downs &#038; European qualification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The top five teams are guaranteed qualification for the league phase of the Champions League, with four regular places boosted by England being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c9vl1y7g1mjo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">one of the two associations with the highest coefficient for 2025-26<\/a> to earn one of the European Performance Spots (EPS), as confirmed on 7 April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/arsenal\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Arsenal<\/b><\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-city\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Manchester City<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-united\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Manchester United<\/b><\/a> cannot finish lower than fifth, so have confirmed their Champions League spots. Should <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/arsenal\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Arsenal<\/a> win this season&#8217;s Champions League, that would not earn an extra Champions League berth for English teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, there is a place in the league phase of the Champions League reserved for the Europa League winners &#8211; which could be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/aston-villa\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Aston Villa<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Should Villa win the Europa League and finish fourth, nothing would change. If they win it and finish fifth, they would enter the Champions League, as would the sixth-placed team via the EPS &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/ckg0pjl4vq5o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">but England would forfeit a Europa League place.<\/a> If Villa win the Europa League and finish sixth, the Conference League place is forfeited.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ordinarily, the sixth-placed Premier League team will qualify for the league phase of the Europa League, along with the FA Cup winners. If the FA Cup winners have already qualified for the Champions League, that Europa place reverts to the league.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-city\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Manchester City<\/a> have qualified for the Champions League, their Conference League play-off round place earned as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cy030p56zx4t\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Carabao Cup final winners<\/a> reverts to the league.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/crystal-palace\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Crystal Palace<\/a> win the Conference League, they will qualify for the league phase of the Europa League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The bottom three teams will be relegated to the Championship. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/wolverhampton-wanderers\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Wolverhampton Wanderers<\/b><\/a>&#8216; relegation was confirmed on 20 April after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cm25p06k3mdt\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">West Ham&#8217;s 0-0 draw at Crystal Palace,<\/a> while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/burnley\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Burnley<\/b><\/a> went down on 22 April after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cnv895p099jt\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">losing 1-0 to Manchester City.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c4gq030l414o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The top five teams are guaranteed qualification for the league phase of the Champions League, with four regular places boosted by England being one of the two associations with the highest coefficient for 2025-26 to earn one of the European Performance Spots (EPS), as confirmed on 7 April. Arsenal. Manchester City and Manchester United cannot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29311,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29309\/revisions\/29311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}