Hearts in Europe lowdown: Format, money, possible opponents

Last season the Gorgie faithful were treated to four European trips as they reached the Conference League group stage. Next season, however, Hearts will encounter a new format, whether it is the Europa League or Conference League.

With the team performing so well and the aforementioned changes, Hearts Standard reached out to Gavin from Scotland's Coefficient to provide a thorough breakdown of what the club can expect from European competition next season, the coefficient, the financial awards, the potential opponents and more.

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Who in the SPFL is guaranteed league phase football?

The Premiership champions are guaranteed automatic Champions League entry and the runners-up enter the Champions League qualifying third round. They would be guaranteed Europa League phase football should they lose either round.

The third and final guarantee is for at least Conference League phase entry, which goes to the Scottish Cup Winners. We’re down to the last eight teams in that competition, and the four favourites are Aberdeen, Celtic, Rangers and, of course, Hearts. Steven Naismith's men will be targeting cup glory but failing that the desire will be for one of the Old Firm to keep the cup in Glasgow. In that scenario, the Scottish Cup winner's entry point, and guaranteed league phase football, goes to third place instead.

This article will go into detail about what’s in store for Hearts next season based on the assumption that they finish 3rd and the Scottish Cup is won by any of the top three.

If you are Scottish, you are likely inherently pessimistic and so at the end of the article, I’ll briefly mention what would happen if someone outside the top three like Aberdeen or - whisper it - Hibs win the Scottish Cup.

The new league phase format explained

All three UEFA tournaments undergo a major revamp next season, with the main change being that the four-team group stage format is gone for good. It's replaced by one 36-team league phase for each of the three competitions.

Despite it being one league, not every team will play each other. Instead, all teams will play the same number of games against, theoretically, the same ‘level’ of opponents. In the top two competitions, the Champions and the Europa Leagues, teams will no longer play three opponents twice in the traditional home and away format but will play eight matches against eight different teams, with four matches at home and four away. To decide the fixtures, the teams will be split into four pots of nine teams and each team will draw two teams from each pot - playing one team from each pot at home and one team away.

If we use the Champions League as an example. Man City as a Pot 1 Champions League team will play two fellow Pot 1 teams; they could be drawn to play Real Madrid at home and Bayern Munich away from home.

This new system could present a potential advantage to lower-ranked teams. Take Celtic. This season they were a Pot 4 Champions League team and had to play 6 games – all against ‘harder’ teams from higher pots. In the new format, they’d still have six games against teams from higher pots, but now they’d also have two extra games against ‘easier’ fellow Pot 4 sides.

In the Conference League, it’s still a 36-team league phase but instead of eight opponents it’s only six different opponents with three matches at home and three away. For the fixtures to be decided, the 36 teams will be placed into six pots of six and every team will draw one team from each pot. So, if Hearts play in the Conference League, it doesn’t matter if they are in pots 4, 5 or 6 because they will still play one team from pots 4, 5 or 6 regardless of which pot they are in.

After everyone has played their fixtures, the top eight sides in the league will advance to the last-16. The teams placed 9th-24th will enter a knockout round to decide which 8 teams will complete the last 16.

The 12 teams from 25th-36th will be eliminated from Europe, with no more ‘drop downs’ to the lower tournament.

It’s worth noting that means only one-third of teams will not progress in each tournament, compared to the 50 per cent in the previous format, which should increase the chances of success for Scottish teams.

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Where do the Scottish Cup winners (or 3rd place) enter Europe?

As Scotland were ranked in our joint highest-ever coefficient position of ninth last season for the second season in a row, we are again guaranteed three teams in Europe. We’ve had this reward for three consecutive seasons now, and we keep our guaranteed entry for the Scottish Cup winners so long as we maintain a top-12 coefficient ranking.

This means that the Scottish Cup winners (or the third-place team) enter the Europa League play-off round again. From there it is simple: win the two-legged tie and qualify for the brand new 36-team Europa League phase and play eight matches against eight different teams. In addition to the two qualifying matches that means TEN European nights which will finish at the end of January.

If the team lose that tie, then that’s where the ‘guaranteed’ aspect comes in. The losers of all Europa League play-off round ties automatically drop into the brand new 36-team Conference League phase to play six fixtures, meaning a minimum of EIGHT European nights concluding at the end of December.

Europa League play-off level of opposition?

The format of the Europa League play-off round has not been announced yet but it’s expected to be simplified from last season’s complicated ‘priority groupings’. I’d expect it to be the traditional and simple method of seeded teams being drawn against unseeded teams. Seedings will be decided based on club coefficient. If a team’s coefficient is lower than 20 per cent of their country’s total, then the club use that as their coefficient.

Hearts’ coefficient is 6.500 while 20 per cent of Scotland’s coefficient is a higher number (7.170). Therefore that’s the coefficient Hearts will enter with. This number can still increase before the end of the season if Rangers continue their run in Europe and raise Scotland’s coefficient further.

Regardless of how far Rangers progress, Hearts’ coefficient will likely be one of the lowest in the Europa League play-off round so they will be an unseeded team. We won’t know until the end of the season for definite, but the seeded teams Hearts could be drawn against will be close in level to either of the Old Firm, so likely a very difficult but not impossible tie.

Advantages of winning the EL playoff round?

The great thing about this tie is that the pressure is completely off. Win or lose and league phase football is guaranteed. Over the last two seasons, fans of both Hearts and then Aberdeen debated that it may well be a better outcome to lose the tie and drop down to be more competitive in the Conference League. The fact that both teams picked up 6 points when moving down a tournament – more than either Celtic or Rangers have managed in the Champions League over the last two seasons – gives some weight to that argument.

Undoubtedly the quality of teams in the Conference League will overall be lower than the Europa League but from a prestige and financial point of view, the Europa League is the aspiration. In the Europa League, it’s eight matches rather than the six in the Conference League, and so you are guaranteed the income from one extra home game. There’s the instant novelty of having 'European Football after Christmas' as the Champions and Europa League phases don’t conclude until the end of January. But most important is the financial difference between the two tournaments.

Although not as pronounced a difference as between the Champions League and the Europa League, there is still a drop off in money between the second and third tournaments. Of the money distributed between the three tournaments, a massive 75 per cent goes to the Champions League, 17 per cent to the Europa League, and the relative ‘crumbs’ are thrown by UEFA to the Conference League – only eight per cent of the total. Still, when the crumbs are worth £250million, they are pretty tasty. Especially given that both Hearts and Aberdeen reported record revenue over the past two financial years due to this Conference League money. The Europa League is worth at least an extra £1million per club, and there is more performance money available per point earned.

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‘Hardest’ and ‘Easiest’ teams to face in Europe

As mentioned earlier when discussing play-off opposition, Hearts will enter the pots using 20 per cent of Scotland’s Coefficient which would only be enough to be in the bottom pot (Pot 4) in the Europa League. However, as Scotland’s Coefficient is fairly high, 20 per cent could potentially place Hearts in any of the bottom three pots in the Conference League because as many as 15 teams could enter with a lower coefficient.

As mentioned, it doesn’t really matter which pot in the league phase you are in – because of the brand-new concept where everyone plays the same number of teams from each pot.

We can make a rough prediction of the teams that will compete in each of the league phases, but, of course, this will just be an estimation based on current league standings, who might win domestic cups and who could progress through the qualifying rounds. However, it’s still worth a look to get an understanding of the ‘types’ of teams that might be in store. An example of the ‘hardest’ and ‘easiest’ fixtures Hearts might face in both tournaments are seen below.

First, the Europa League:

Secondly, the Conference League: 

Coefficient

It might feel deflating that Hearts’ club coefficient isn’t high enough to be used when deciding which pot they enter. It will feel alien to a lot of football fans in Scotland knowing that the better their rivals perform in Europe (in this season's case, Rangers), the more points will be earned for their own club’s coefficient the following season. They may not go as far as to ‘support’ other clubs in Europe, but at least understanding the positive impact that flows to their own club as a result can ‘soften the blow’ of seeing others do well.

However, there are two things to bear in mind here when despairing at having a low coefficient. Firstly - Hearts are not alone in this. Everyone in Scotland except for Rangers, Celtic and Aberdeen would enter Europe with 20 per cent of Scotland’s total. Secondly, and more pertinently, the coefficient is a rolling total of European performance over the last five seasons. Four years ago, Hearts were demoted when the season was curtailed after 30 games and the Jambos were only four points adrift at the bottom. So that means in three of the last five years, Hearts were not in Europe at all. Since regaining immediate promotion, Hearts will have competed in Europe in every season - soon to be three in a row - and in turn, their coefficient is on the rise (6.5 points after two years).

For a club’s own coefficient (note that this differs from the country coefficient), two points are awarded for a win and one point for a draw from the group stage onward only. If a club doesn’t reach the group stages (soon to be league phase) they are awarded points to the club coefficient depending on what round they are eliminated in. Eliminated in Conference League QR1 = 1 point, QR2= 1.5 pts, QR3= 2pts and Play-off Round = 2.5 points. Hence Hearts’ club coefficient of 6.5 points consists of the four points earned in 2022/23 for their two wins over Rigas and 2.5 points in20 23/24 for their elimination in the playoff round.

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As a result, this time next year after another year of European performance, coupled with another non-competing year dropping off, Hearts would have three out of the last five seasons as coefficient-earning years.

For comparison, Aberdeen have competed in Europe four out of the last five seasons and have a club coefficient of 11.5 It is therefore very likely that Hearts would join Aberdeen in having their own coefficient and not be relying on 20 per cent of the total of Scotland’s country coefficient.

The country coefficient differs from the club coefficient in that all matches count towards it (including qualifying rounds, although points are halved in qualifying), and the total is divided by the number of teams your country entered in Europe.

For example, in 2022/23 Hearts added 4 points to their own club coefficient and 0.8 points to Scotland’s country coefficient (four points divided by five teams = 0.8 pts). This season, Hearts added 0.2 pts to Scotland’s coefficient (one win worth only one point in qualifying, divided by 5) but added 2.5 pts to their club coefficient through the play-off round elimination.

The club coefficient is incredibly important when the qualifying draws are made because the higher a club's coefficient grows the more chance they have of being seeded in the qualification rounds.

Furthermore, under a new distribution model, UEFA is now including a five-year coefficient when dishing out the prize money; previously they only looked at the 10-year. The exact methodology won’t be released until this summer but we do know it will be a combination of both 10-year and five-year CLUB coefficient as well as a multiplier using the COUNTRY coefficient.

Therefore, the higher both Scotland’s and Hearts’ coefficients can rise, the higher Hearts' European earnings will rise in future seasons. Money makes money, and so the more Hearts earn, the better quality of player they can attract and therefore the greater the chance of being competitive in Europe and earning more results-based prizemoney by winning games. Higher quality of players also increases the chances of having a successful ‘player trading model’ and so Hearts can then start maximising money received from transfer activity. More money flowing in for transfers means a greater ability to spend in the transfer market and so the cycle continues. It’s all very easy on paper and, of course, it won’t always work like that. But the fact that UEFA revenue completely dwarves any money our clubs receive from the domestic TV deal, it’s easy to see why football investors are starting to look at SPFL clubs. Investors will see that they don’t even need to disrupt the Old Firm as successive third-place finishes can easily double a club's revenue.

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If Hearts finish third but someone outside the top 3 wins the cup?

Finally, this article has assumed that Hearts finish third and any of the top 3 sides win the Scottish Cup. If this does not happen, then it will be a major blow to Hearts as they will not enter Europe with ‘guaranteed’ league phase football. They will go from a pressure-free play-off tie, with an arguably better outcome if they lose it, to needing to win at least two high-pressure ties or face early elimination from Europe.

In that scenario, third place would still enter the Europa League (this is new under the format change, previously it would have been Conference League). But instead of the play-off round, they would enter two rounds earlier in qualifying round 2 (QR2). To reach the Europa League they’d have to win QR2, QR3 and the play-off round. A much bigger task. An example of the ‘easiest’ and ‘hardest’ routes to the Europa League phase, as it stands:

Entering in Europa League qualifying rounds means you will always drop into the Conference League qualification process should you lose. For example, if they lose in QR2 they drop into QR3 in the Conference League - and would have to win QR3 and the play-off Round in the Conference League to make the league phase.

If they lose in QR3 in the Europa League, they would drop into the play-off round, and if they lose in the play-off round in the Europa League they’d drop directly into the Conference League phase. An example of the ‘easiest’ and ‘hardest’ routes to the Conference League phase, as it stands:

Lose any of the Conference rounds and it’s total elimination. Instead of the guaranteed £3m-5million they’d be looking at £600k-£1million depending on how far they progress in qualifying. That would be supplemented by the ‘solidarity payments’ which will be much increased under the new format and so will now be worth £1m-£1.5million and are paid to every team in the SPFL that does not qualify for a league phase.

Not to mention the anguish of watching a team that you likely finished comfortably above in the Premiership having eight, maybe 10, European nights under the lights.