Scotland's UEFA Coefficient: Third-Round Preview

Well, that went about as well as could be expected.

Second-Round Review

Celtic dispatched Linfield as handily as you would think -- 2-0 in the away leg, and 4-0 in the home leg. I guess some might have expected even more lopsided scores, but a win's a win, and this was two wins and 0.5 for the coefficient. Also, this guarantees Celtic a place in the playoff round of either the Champions League or Europa League.

Aberdeen unexpectedly struggled to a 1-1 draw at home, meaning they needed at least one away goal to make it through. Midway through the second half, they had none, but they came up with two in rapid succession to progress. 0.375 for the coefficient, and they progress. We could quibble with the dropped 0.125 at home, but let's not.

Third-Round Preview

Celtic face the Norwegian champions, Rosenborg. I have to admit, I like the qualifying better than the group-stage, where 15 out of the 32 teams are not actually league champions. Here, however, you have the Scottish champions facing the Norwegian champions. The Scottish champions got there after defeating the Northern Irish champions, who defeated the Sammarinese champions. The Norwegian champions defeated the Irish champions.

Celtic's Elo is 1596, Rosenborg's 1501. It shouldn't be a blowout, but Celtic should win comfortably. Not getting the full 0.5 for the coefficient would be a little bit of a disappointment, but the main thing is making it through. (Clubelo gives Celtic a 65.3% chance of advancing, but that seems a little low.)

Aberdeen is up against Cypriot side Apollon Limassol, the 3rd place Cypriot club (and cup winners). Aberdeen has an Elo of 1393, Apollon Limassol 1444. Clubelo gives this a 57.5% chance to go to the Cypriots. I have hope that this is Aberdeen's year to break through to the playoff round. So let's say any result that sees Aberdeen advancing is good, and exiting without picking up any points is bad.

Where We Stand

Hey, Scotland moved up to 26th from 27th, so that's something. (Not a good couple of weeks for Kazakhstan.) That was my "best realistic scenario". My best realistic scenario for this round is keeping 26th, which should be even easier since Celtic should deny Norway points by beating Rosenborg. 24th is theoretically possible, but very unlikely. On the other side, a Celtic collapse would be the only thing that would let Scotland slide to 27th or 28th.

The good news is that nobody below 21st place has more than 2 teams left in European competition, which puts things on an even playing field moving forward. Sweden lost its Champions League entrant, so they may be out of Europe sooner rather than later. So I think the best case scenario is having both Scottish sides advance with 0.75-1 point, and a lot of the nations above them having only 1 side left in Europe.

How bad has this year been for Scotland's coefficient? On the one hand, the 1.125 is worse than any comparable side ranked higher than Iceland (33rd). On the other hand, last year (not a bad year!) at this stage, they had 1.875. If they picked up 1.875 this year, they would be...in 26th place (although significantly closer to 25th).

The question going forward...will this be a struggle to keep the second-round Europa League entrance due to the Scottish Cup winner (or league runner-up). (This threshhold is 24th or 26th depending on...stuff.) Or can Scotland put two teams in the group stages and move closer to 18th (which would put the Cup winner in the third round) and higher?

Scotland's UEFA Coefficient: Second-Round Preview

First-Round Review

Well, that was a disaster. I was embarrassed by it, until I realized that I am not really Scottish, so I am not tainted by association.

Let's start with St. Johnstone. They should have been able to beat the Lithuanian runners-up at home, but they lost 2-1. When FK Trakai went down to 10 men in Lithuania, St. Johnstone should have been able to get two goals to win the tie. But they didn't. They should have been able to get one goal, to get 0.25 for the coefficient before exiting. But they didn't. They should have been able to prevent the shorthanded goal to salvage the minimum 0.125. But they didn't. And their manager probably shouldn't have described the Lithuanians as "technically better" after the first leg. But he did.

So, on to Rangers. I was excited when before the match, Rangers' manager explicitly mentioned the importance of doing well in order to raise up Scotland's UEFA coefficient. And then they beat Luxembourg's fourth-best team 1-0 at home. You'd think they could do better, but still, 0.25 for the coefficient and all that. Then they went to Luxembourg and not only lost, but lost 2-0, which knocked them out.

The optimistic (less pessimistic) way to look at this would be to say that Rangers, while fielding a team good enough to get third place, knew that wouldn't be good enough, so they had to blow up the roster as if they had just been promoted. The new group of players didn't have time to gel and got upset by a more cohesive squad.

The pessimistic (more pessimistic) way to look at this is that a perfectly-good third-place squad got blown up for no good reason. While that squad certainly would have been good enough to beat the fourth-best side in Luxembourg, this group of overpaid imports is not going to cut it.

Time will tell, but not in the Europa League, because that door is closed for another year.

Second-Round Preview

That leaves Aberdeen and Celtic.

Aberdeen opens things up on Thursday against Bosnia-Herzegovina's Siroki Brijeg. Aberdeen's Elo is now 1381, and Siroki Brijeg's is now 1236. Siroki Brijeg's went up for advancing from the first round, and Aberdeen's tumbled based on the St. Johnstone and Rangers results pulling down everybody in Scotland. clubelo.com lists Aberdeen as 72.7% favorites to advance. So let's say that a win and a draw, worth 0.375 for the coefficient is the target.

Celtic starts on Friday against Northern Ireland Champions Linfield. Friday is an unusual date for a Champions League match -- most will be played on Tuesday (hence why I'm rushing to get this post up). But the match was rescheduled to avoid "marching season" in Northern Ireland, which has its own set of sectarian tensions that will cause the police to have their hands full.

Speaking of sectarian tensions, Linfield is a traditionally Protestant club, and Celtic is traditionally Catholic. So while it seemed like Linfield might get a big payday from Celtic fans traveling over to see their club, Celtic told their fans to stay away. This is the sort of thing that fascinates me about European soccer that you don't get by following American sports.

Anyway, clubelo.com puts Celtic as 98.1% favorites to advance. Anything less than the full 0.5 will be an embarrassment. Though Scottish clubs are getting used to embarrassment, I think there will be enough continuity to manhandle Linfield.

Where We Stand

I said that 27th place would be the "extreme negative scenario".  Here were are in 27th. A good showing by Norway could drop Scotland down to 28th, even if the Scottish teams are perfect in this round. At this point, we have to hope that both Celtic and Aberdeen stay alive into the group stage and climb back up as other countries inevitably have some teams knocked out.

If everything breaks Scotland's way, they could be in 23rd at the end of the second round, but 26th with both clubs alive is the best realistic scenario.

Google Local: Rocketing to 500K

Well, it took about two more weeks to hit 500K photos. Nothing magic, just the bunch of pictures I've accumulated over the past few months starting to gain traction.

This Dollar Tree (Chantilly, VA) from April cracked 30K photos and is now #4 overall. Fun fact: I had a raging ear infection when I took that picture.

Four more photos topped 10K.

This Dollar Tree (Crofton, MD) from May is now #12.

This Harris Teeter (Bowie, MD) from June is now #13.

This Dollar Tree (Bowie, MD) from June is now #14. If I cared more about this project, I think I would spend a day driving around and taking pictures of Dollar Trees.

This Michael's (Vienna, VA) from June is now #15. The fact that I am getting pictures to 10K views in about a month tells me I shouldn't have much problem breaking the million view mark. Halfway there!

Also, those latest ones aren't as bad as some of the other popular photos.