Celtic In Europe 2025/26

May as well get this thread started.

Anyone know who we could potentially come up against? Straight into play off round champions path so surely we should get a good draw? Still a bit to go in the leagues obviously but usually someone has an idea of roughly a few teams we could play.

 

As it stands it could be paphos, dynamo kiev, sturm graz, Lugano or malmo. Slovan Bratislava are also a decent possibility.

 

All very winnable then. Tbh if it was mid season I'd say we would easily beat every single one of those. However being early on makes it a bit tougher. Thankfully the season has normally started by the final qaulifier so we won't be full pre season rusty.

 

At the start of the season for most teams, as long as we have the crux of our team I think we'll be fine. 3 games before the first leg too.

 

* me I know we enjoy a premature thread but this is taking the *.

 

How do we know we might get? What is it based on?

 

Who's currently winning their league is my guess

 

I done a post on another thread about chances of being seeded in CL Playoff but I can’t find it. This thread seems the best fit now to do an update.

We need to be in the top 5 ranked teams to be seeded for the playoff round. The top ranked team will likely get in if the CL winner has already qualified from their league. So only Villa and Dortmund look a threat to that from the 8 quarter finalists. Bayern, Inter, PSG, Arsenal, Barca and Real Madrid will qualify so any of the 6 win it’s good for us.

Of the teams winning their league just now Olympiakos (Greece) will go straight in as the top ranked team. Their main threat just now is probably Red Bull Salzburg who are in 3rd in Austria but because of their halving points system are only 4 of top now where they were 8 behind from the regular season.

The 4 leagues whose champions will go straight into the playoff are Austria, Scotland, Switzerland and Norway.

Norway, Bodo/Glimt have won their league and will be seeded above us so we need to have only 3 other teams ranked above us to be seeded.

Switzerland we are better ranked than all teams in that league so it doesn’t matter who wins it.

Austria we want either Sturm Graz (SG) or Austria Vienna (AV) to win over Red Bull Salzburg. AV are 2 points clear of SG and 4 clear of Salzburg.

Ukraine, Dynamo Kiev are 10 clear of Shakhtar having played a game more. Eight games to go, we want DK to win here.

Hungary - Puskas Academy are 4 points clear with 8 games to go of Ferencvaros. We want them to win as Ferencvaros are seeded higher than us.

Denmark - Midtjylland are top by 4 points having played a game more than Copenhagen. This has been a back and forth all season and 7 games still to play. It would be good if Copenhagen don’t win it as they are ranked above us.

Croatia - Hadjuk Split (HS) are top by a point from Rijeka, with Dinamo Zagreb(DZ), 5 points back and 9 games to go. We want either HS or Rijeka to win as DZ are seeded above us.

Serbia - Red Star have won the league all but mathematically they are 23 points clear and will be seeded above us.

Summary - to be seeded we need to be in the top 5 seeded teams in the playoff round. One team Bodo/Glimt have qualified and will be seeded above us.

We want one of the qualified teams to win the CL and as things stand Olympiakos go into the league phase.

We then need from the 6 leagues above, we need a minimum of 3 of those leagues to finish with champions who are not seeded above us. So need to keep our eyes on Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Serbia (it’s done) and Ukraine. We want 3 of Salzburg, Dinamo Zagreb, Copenhagen, Ferencvaros or Shakter to not win their league.

 

Schmeichel
Johnston CCV KT Schlupp
Bernardo CalMac
New CAM
Kuhn Maeda Jota
​

Hopefully team looking something like this by time play off arrives, would like to see 4-2-3-1 deployed more often (the formation Brendan used during his first spell) next season rather than 4-3-3 every week, with Bernardo alongside Cal, both will have license to venture forward at the right moments but I think both would compliment each other very well as a central midfield partnership, would then be looking to sign better than Hatate to be that main danger man behind the front 3 as I find him too inconsistent to be relied upon as a consistent performer

 

Scottish clubs will be able to postpone a league match to prepare for a play-off round tie in European competition from next season.

Previously postponements had to be agreed by both clubs but now a team playing in Europe can unilaterally delay a game.

However, the change only applies to matches on the weekend of 23 and 24 August 2025, between the first and second legs of play-off ties in the Champions League, Europa League, and Conference League.

Can only be a positive, especially for the teams finishing 3rd & 4th in our league

 

Probably not the right thread but had a look at Club Brugge’s accounts and the Swiss Ramble breakdown on them the other day. I think they are an interesting benchmark for us in Europe given they have done well in European competitions the last few years they have 2 last 16 CL and a conference league semi final.

What I found interesting about Club Brugge is they actually have a pretty modest match day income as their stadium is under 30,000, their commercial outwith Europe is also often short of what Celtic do and I couldn’t see merchandise figures but these will likely be smaller than ours.

Their European money isn’t actually that much better than ours given we have had 3 years CL vs their one year in the ECL.

Club Brugge actually have run at an Operational loss in each of the last few years despite their Euro success what has made them profitable is their player trading. It blows us out the water, they have made €71m profit and €54m profit on player sales in the last two seasons and still have a squad stacked with young talented guys like Jashari, Onyedika, Tzolis, Ordnez, De Cuyper etc.

Some think we are good at player trading you have to look at these guys, between bringing through academy stars a plenty to smart recruitment in the €5-10m range they have some hit rate.

Yeah they get more from domestic TV but actually their payout from this years CL when you take into account we can sell double the amount of tickets per game won’t be miles apart and they got the bonus €11m for making last 16. Maybe £5m tops in it. Our matchday is more than double theirs which more than compensates for domestic TV deals and the likes.

The other major thing that stands out they have €5m in the bank and go between that to €15m at last count we had over €80m.

The thing that really frustrates me is there is literally nothing stopping our Board from doing something very similar to what Club Brugge do, in fact they have more jeopardy in their league than we do as there are 4 or 5 clubs who can have a standout season and challenge them. Their actual operations generate less revenue than us and they operate of a higher expense base but purely down to recruitment being good they have outperformed us consistently in Europe and not through parking the bus but having a well drilled sound footballing side.

 

After the results this week and Scotland confirmed as finishing 14th in the coefficient rankings means that the 25/26 Premiership winners will only have one CL qualifier for the 26/27 CL.

I also saw another little caveat, basically if the Europa League winners have already qualified for CL, so only Athletic Club win it, even if Rangers were the top ranked club from all the potential qualifiers because Celtic as league champions haven’t automatically qualified they cannot be awarded that place under a rule called Leapfrogging. Where no team can gain automatic entry to the league phase whilst someone from their domestic league still has to qualify.

 

Nah, I came on here looking for a post to check our coefficient and who we could be up against in the play offs.

 

These qualifiers give me the fear man. Always some tricky teams and even then just takes an off day or a red card or something and it's a massive challenge. That said, if we play the way we can and hopefully with a few new faces, we should always have enough.

 

Qualifiers will be a challenge but we MUST get to the Champions League proper again and build upon the achievements from this year.

From there, it all depends on the fixture lists.

At a bare minimum I expect to qualify for the league phase and then put on fighting displays.

In an ideal world, if everything goes our way, I'd love to get to the last 16.

 

KT won't be playing LCB in a back 4..

We have paid £11m for Engels he'll definitely be playing..

I agree we may see more of a 4-2-3-1 at times, but this will be because KT is back as an overlapping FB..

We're also linked with a few DMs, so we'll likely sign one for games where we need to be more solid in the midfield..

I like Bernardo and I see you've mentioned him in a few threads as one of the DMs, but he isn't getting much of a look in under Rodgers at the moment. Not sure he rates him that highly.

 

If we go in with a proper plan and a strengthened squad then we should be fine. If we do what we used to do - rocking up forced to play players out of position, not replaced players leaving, etc, we will struggle.

 

One qualifier plus a playoff?

 

Apparently we're seeded but as draws on 4/8/25, over three months away we'll have plenty of time to speculate, really this is a ridiculously early post for a draw that's over three months away

 

Most teams haven't confirmed qualifiers yet so I doubt seeding will be confirmed this early. It can vary heavily on who qualifies and who gets through other qualifiers.

The first leg isn't until 19th August, so we should have most new signings in by then.