Behdad Eghbali will have a difficult job justifying the direction of the BlueCo project if Chelsea fail to qualify for the UEFA Champions League.
Chelsea will be dealt a major blow to their hopes of remaining compliant with the Premier League’s spending rules if they fail to qualify for the UEFA Champions League. The Blues have fallen behind in the race for qualification to Europe’s top-flight competition, even though there are five spots up for grabs this season.
Earlier this month, Chelsea announced the biggest pre-tax loss in Premier League history. The west Londoners recorded a £262million deficit during the 2024/25 campaign, eclipsing the £197.5m lost by Manchester City in 2011.
In an official statement, Chelsea insisted that they remain compliant with profit and sustainability rules, which allow losses of £105m over a three year period. Although the Blues won the Club World Cup last season, the £85m in prize money, plus about £43m from the Champions League this term, will be recorded in their next accounts.
So, if BlueCo wish to continue spending as much as they have, forking out almost £1.5bn on players since taking the reins in May 2022, they’ll need to ensure that Chelsea consistently qualify for Europe’s top-flight competition. Even if the west Londoners were to settle for either the Europa League or Conference League, the prize money is incomparable.
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When UEFA expanded each of the three club competitions, they announced the introduction of a new revenue distribution system worth almost £3bn. They set aside an eye-watering £2.1bn (74.4 per cent of the prize pool) for clubs competing in the Champions League and the Super Cup.
The football governing body also allocated £490.7m for clubs competing in the Europa League, and £247.5m for clubs competing in the Conference League, highlighting just how lucrative the top-flight competition is.
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Nevertheless, every club that qualifies for the Champions League earns an automatic £15.7m, regardless of performance. In the group phase, UEFA offer £1.8m for a win and £590,000 for a draw, as well as rewards for placement in the league.
A top eight finish in the group phase, which secures automatic qualification to the round of 16, earns £1.7m. Clubs are also awarded £233,000 for each place in the table. Even more money is up for grabs in the latter stages of the competition.
For reaching each round of the knockout phase, UEFA offer:
- Winner: £21.5m
- Runner-up: £15.9m
- Semi-finals: £12.9m
- Quarter-finals: £10.7m
- Round-of-16: £9.4m
Before even accounting for gate receipts, commercial revenues, and the new ‘value pillar’ of payments, which could earn up to an additional £10.5m for some clubs, the winner of the Champions League could bank close to £100m in prize money.
If Chelsea were to fail to qualify for Europe’s top-flight competition, they could will be dealt a blow to their hopes of remaining compliant with the Premier League’s spending rules. The Blues could also be forced to offload a couple of big names in order to make up for the holes in their income.
Speaking to reporters at Cobham on Monday afternoon, Liam Rosenior outlined his plan to climb the table. The Chelsea boss said: “We’ve made it very difficult for ourselves. We have to be honest and realistic with that.
“What we can’t do is give up; we keep fighting. We have to make sure we go to Brighton with similar attributes to what I saw against Manchester United in terms of our energy, and our intensity and engagement to the game, which was good.
“But what we didn’t do is we didn’t keep a clean sheet in the moment, and we didn’t take advantage of the chances, so we need to be more clinical and more ruthless in both boxes.”
On whether he fees the support of Behdad Eghbali, who’ll have a difficult job justifying the project’s direction if Chelsea miss out, Rosenior said: “100 per cent. They’ve been supportive of me in our daily conversations, sporting directors involved, they’ve been magnificent in their support of me and the team.
“We’re relying on them, we know we need to win games of football in the now. That doesn’t go against what we’re trying to do, which is give consistent success to this club in the long term.”
