Uefa Changes Squeeze Scotland's Europa League Route

Uefa has redrawn the qualifying map for the Europa League from next season, and the change leaves Scotland's representative facing a harder route to the league phase.

The third qualifying round currently funnels every side into one seeded draw. From next season it splits into separate paths for champions and non-champions, matching the format already used in the Champions League and the Conference League.

That ends the possibility of meeting sides such as Iberia 1999, Kairat Almaty or Ararat, three clubs who currently drop into the Europa League after losing in the Champions League's champions path. Scotland's title winners will no longer cross that group in the third round.

The non-champions path is the tougher of the two. It is stocked with sides who qualify by league placing from Belgium, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Greece, as well as non-champions dropping down from the Champions League - this season that meant Olympiakos, Sparta Prague, Sturm Graz and Union St-Gilloise. Hearts were in that path this season and went out to Benfica; Rangers, seeded at the time, were eliminated at the same stage by Jagiellonia Bialystok.

Under the new format, the Scottish Cup winners enter at the first qualifying round - or the Premiership runners-up, if the same club wins both the league and the Cup. Celtic and Rangers, meanwhile, have seen their five-year coefficient slide after a run of poor European results, and may go into the draw unseeded next season, raising the prospect of facing a side from one of the continent's bigger leagues.

One detail works in Scotland's favour. Should the Scottish champions fall out of Champions League qualifying and into the Europa League, they would then meet another team dropping down from the Champions League's champions path, rather than the stronger non-champions group.