Newcastle looks sure to end a 21-season absence from the elite stage - and 10 years without any European competitions - by finishing in the top four in the Premier League. Salzburg is on track for another Austrian league title and one of the 26 direct Champions League entries into the 32-team group stage. The 1967 champions from Scotland will return to the group stage when an inevitable league title is sealed.Ĭeltic has won 30 of 33 games in the Scottish league and is 13 points ahead of Rangers with five games left. It would be the club’s first league title since 2017 and only a second appearance in the group stage of the Champions League in 20 years.įeyenoord won its European title by beating another former champion, Celtic. Red Star is helping to give the likely Champions League lineup a throwback look with several winners of the old European Cup - the name of the competition before it was rebranded and reformatted in 1992.įeyenoord, the 1970 European champion, leads by eight points in the Netherlands with four games left. Petersburg will go to Red Star, whose long-time shirt sponsor until last year was Zenit owner Gazprom. The spot that would have gone to Zenit St. Serbia is now ranked high enough by UEFA so Red Star will go directly to the group stage - partly because Russian clubs have been excluded. Three years ago, Red Star completed the rare feat of advancing through four Champions League qualifying rounds to reach the group stage in back-to-back seasons. The 1991 European champions also restored their status internationally. Already champion again in the Serbian league, Red Star can reach 100 points for the third straight season if it wins its last four games. Red Star Belgrade dominates like no other club in any other country. Raków Częstochowa is 11 points ahead of Legia Warsaw with four games left. The runaway leader in Poland could be a first-time league champion. Sparta, which last won the title nine years ago, hosts the city derby on May 13. Sparta Prague starts the five-team playoffs in the Czech Republic two points ahead of Slavia Prague. “It’s pretty much football as usual now but emotionally we are like a squeezed lemon.” “It’s a little bit easier than it was in the very beginning,” Shakhtar official Yuriy Svyrydov told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Shakhtar is scheduled to host Dnipro-1 at the end of the month in Lviv, far from each club’s home city in war-ravaged eastern Ukraine. Somehow, the league is only one game behind schedule after 24 of 30 rounds - and second-place Dnipro-1 can use that game to close the gap on perennial champion Shakhtar Donetsk to two points. The entire Ukrainian league season has been played in near-empty stadiums in the safer western part of the country despite the constant threat of disruption from sirens alerting of Russian air raids. GENEVA (AP) - Forget about Manchester City and Barcelona for a moment and consider the Ukrainian and Turkish soccer leagues.īoth, somewhat amazingly, are set to be completed in the next few weeks despite war and disaster, and both have big showdown games coming up this month that could decide the titles.
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