UEFA coefficient ranking France Portugal, Digi Mart USA News: France gained 0.714 points on Thursday thanks to Marseille, Monaco and Lyon, but Portugal gained more, largely due to a late victory by Torreense, a club from the second division.
The European evening was successful for French clubs but not enough to close the gap. Marseille beat Leverkusen, Monaco defeated Nordsjælland and Lyon drew with Real Sociedad.
In the UEFA coefficient standings, France therefore collected valuable points.
Portugal did even better, carried by Benfica, Braga and especially Torreense. The second-division club scored a dramatic victory in stoppage time, and the gap between the two countries continues to shrink.
Under the UEFA coefficient system, each win is worth 2 points and each draw 1 point. The total is then divided by the number of clubs entered by each country.
With seven clubs in play, France collected 5 points on Thursday, thanks to Marseille’s 1-0 win at Leverkusen, Monaco’s 2-0 win over Nordsjælland and Lyon’s 1-1 draw at Real Sociedad. That equals 0.714 points in the ranking.
In the five-year ranking, France now has 72.296 points and keeps fifth place. In the current season, it rose from 6.500 to 7.214 points but remains only 10th.
Portugal earned a full 1 point. With only five clubs entered, its 5 points from the evening carry more weight.
Benfica beat Lech Poznań 3-1, Braga drew 0-0 at Aarhus, and Torreense did the rest.
The second-division club had qualified directly for the Europa League league phase by winning the Portuguese Cup last spring. According to the newspaper Record, Torreense is only the third Portuguese club outside the top flight to play in a European competition.
Against Ararat-Armenia, last place in the league phase, Torreense long appeared headed for defeat. Reduced to ten men in the 25th minute after Jorge Aguirre was sent off, having scored in the 13th minute, the club trailed 1-2 entering stoppage time.
Javier Vázquez López (90+3) and then Musa Drammeh (90+5) turned the match around to make it 3-2.
That decisive win mattered for the UEFA ranking. Without it, Portugal would have gained only 0.6 points, and France would have slightly widened its lead.
Portugal now has 69.150 points in the five-year ranking. The gap with France is only 3.146 points, compared with 3.432 on Wednesday evening and 3.689 on Tuesday, after Lens’s nightmare evening.
In the current season, Portugal occupies second place with 8.900 points, just behind England (9.166). That position would give it an additional Champions League place.
Record had already said that Torreense’s presence in the Europa League made Portugal a serious contender to challenge for fifth place.
It was therefore a mixed European week for France. Despite the wins by Marseille and Monaco, Portugal is steadily closing in.
To keep its fifth place, France will need to deliver more good results before the end of the season.
