Liverpool F.C. Champions League qualification 2005-06

Although they were the champions of Europe, Liverpool FC's domestic performance meant the team had finished outside the top four of the Premiership (the requirement for entry to the Champions League) and therefore unable to defend their title.

2005–06 season Champions League qualification

England’s high country coefficient allows the maximum number of teams (four) to be entered into the Champions League competition. In the 2004-05 season five English teams had qualified under the previous UEFA guidelines for the Champions League Competition: Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, and Everton, who had finished in the top four places in the Premier League, and Liverpool FC, who had won the competition that year. Under then-existing UEFA regulations, the choice of which team to be excluded (either fourth placed finishers Everton or Champions League winners Liverpool) fell to the Football Association.

This situation was unusual but neither unprecedented nor unforeseen. Indeed, the FA itself foresaw the same situation arising1 in the Winter of 2004 and released a statement on 10 March 2004 that if Arsenal or Chelsea won the Champions League, but failed to finish in the top four Premier League spots, they would nonetheless be automatically entered in the next year’s competition and the fourth placed Premier League team placed in the UEFA Cup.

Only a year later, the FA changed its mind 2 and decided that the top four finishing teams in the Premier League would be entered into the Champions League regardless of Liverpool’s Champions League triumph. When the inconsistency was pointed out to the FA, the FA pulled the previous year's statement from its web site, and promised a forthcoming explanation. Nothing else was heard from the FA for several months.

Merseyside implications

The controversy was intensified not only because Liverpool FC and Everton FC have a storied Merseyside rivalry, but also because entry into Europe's top club competition was the subject of a longstanding grudge between the two clubs. The grudge has its origin twenty years before in May 1985, when Everton had won the First Division, thus clinching entry into the next year's European Cup. However, following the Heysel disaster (May 29 1985) involving Liverpool fans, English clubs were given an indefinite ban from European competitions (lifted in 1990, except for Liverpool, who were banned for a further year). The ban coincided with a period of remarkable Everton successes (including two first and one second place finishes) which would have ordinarily earned Everton at least three years of top flight European Football. 3 Many Everton supporters see this period of fellow European campaigns as the start of Everton's slide out of the top echelons of English football, a slide for which Liverpool is thus partially responsible. 4 Twenty years after Heysel, Everton supporters did not believe it would be just that they should be denied a place in the top club competition by Liverpool. 5

Officially, EFC offered their support of LFC's entry into the Champions League, although they expressed concern that LFC's entry should not come at the financial expense of any other clubs in the Champions League competition and then made the rather radical suggestion that Liverpool should be excluded from any share of the Group Stage Market Pool, the most lucrative source of Champions League revenue, which would have left Liverpool essentially with only the match day income from their Champions League matches as well as some performance bonuses and match fees. 6

UEFA ruling

For some time it was unclear whether Liverpool would be granted the right to defend their title or be left with UEFA Cup football. Initially UEFA said there was nothing that could be done8. But after a ground swell of support for Liverpool’s inclusion UEFA9 seemed to soften its stance. The League of Wales champions The New Saints F.C. offered to play a two-legged tie for TNS' place in the first qualifying round.10 The situation was finally resolved by UEFA on 10 June 200511. Liverpool would be allowed to enter the competition in 2005-06, however at a cost: Liverpool would have to enter the competition from the first Qualifying Round, meaning a grueling summer qualifying campaign. Rather ironically, Liverpool ended up playing The New Saints in the first qualifying round.

With regard to the financial implications of Liverpool's entry, UEFA did decree that Liverpool would be treated as the lowest-placed English club for determining their share of the England market pool, however they essentially left undecided the difficulty of how Champions League revenue calibrated for 32 clubs would be divided instead among 33 clubs, because this problem was not only extremely difficult, but also would only become a problem if all three English teams playing in the qualifying rounds (Manchester United, Liverpool, and Everton) actually qualified for the Group Stage. As it happened, Everton failed to qualify for the Group Stages of the Champions League, losing both matches to Villareal in the third qualifying round, 12 thus ending Everton's claim to any portion of the Group Stage Market Pool, match fees or performance bonuses.

Repercussions

UEFA amended Rule 1.0313 to grant future European title holders automatic qualification to the next year’s Champions League competition, at the expense of the fourth-placed team in the title holders' league if the league is entitled to enter four teams and the Champions League winners finish outside the top four. For a time during the 2005-06 season there was a very good chance that the new rules would be invoked for the 2006-07 tournament, as Arsenal F.C. progressed to the Champions League final against Spanish side F.C. Barcelona while languishing in fifth place in the Premier League. Ironically, the team that was in danger of "losing" a Champions League place was none other than Arsenal's fiercest local rival, Tottenham Hotspur. In the end, Arsenal managed to overtake Tottenham for fourth place on the final day of the Premier League season, and then lost the Champions League final.

References