Sabah reach the Champions League and lift Azerbaijan to 25th

Published 3 September 2026

Sabah won six of eight matches to come through four Champions League qualifying rounds, something only six clubs had done before. After qualifying, Azerbaijan’s season coefficient of 5.125 is the highest of any association, and the table has it 25th.

Sabah went into the 2026/27 Champions League at the first qualifying round, with four ties between it and the group stage, and won every one of them: six wins and two defeats from eight matches, 18 goals scored and seven conceded. Azerbaijan has a club in the group stage for the second time in its history, and before Sabah only six clubs had ever come through four qualifying rounds to get there.

Four rounds, the last two from behind

Sabah beat The New Saints of Wales 4:1 on aggregate and KuPS of Finland 3:0 without losing a leg. The next two rounds both started with a defeat. AGF Aarhus won the first leg 2:1 in Denmark, and Sabah answered with 4:0 at home to go through 5:2. Hapoel Be'er Sheva also won its first leg 2:1, in Israel, and on 25 August Sabah won the return 5:2 after extra time, 6:4 on the tie. In each of the four ties Sabah was the club with the lower coefficient, its 6.000 against opponents rated between 8.421 and 14.000.

The seven runs

Thirteen clubs have entered the Champions League at the first qualifying round and reached the group stage, but for the first six the road was shorter. Košice and Dynamo Kyiv in 1997/98, then HJK Helsinki and Dynamo Kyiv again in 1998/99, had two rounds to win; BATE Borisov and Anorthosis in 2008/09 had three. From 2018/19 to 2023/24 there was also a preliminary round below the first, and no club that started there ever reached the group stage. Since 2018/19 the road from the first qualifying round has been four ties long, and six clubs have made it to the end, seven times between them: Red Star Belgrade in 2018/19 and again in 2019/20, Ferencváros in 2020/21, Malmö FF in 2021/22, Slovan Bratislava in 2024/25, Kairat in 2025/26, and now Sabah.

None of them won as often on the way as Sabah. Red Star’s first run was four wins and four draws; Malmö FF and Slovan Bratislava won five matches each, Kairat three; Ferencváros needed only five matches in all, since three of its four rounds were settled over a single leg. Kairat is the only one of the six that, like Sabah, lost twice in qualifying and still got through.

What the run is worth

Sabah’s 12.0 points are more than half of Azerbaijan’s 20.5 for the season. A qualifying win is worth a point to the association and reaching the group stage brings a bonus of six; spread over the four clubs Azerbaijan entered, that comes to a season coefficient of 5.125, the highest of all 55 associations after the qualifying rounds. In the five-season table Azerbaijan is 25th. It has been higher only once, at 23rd in 2017/18, and its total of 23.687 is the highest it has ever recorded.

Qarabağ, and the club that went instead

Azerbaijan’s only previous club in the Champions League group stage was Qarabağ, in 2017/18, and Qarabağ had entered at the second qualifying round. This season it went out of the Conference League in the fourth qualifying round, with a club coefficient of 42.750, seven times Sabah’s 6.000. Sabah, for its part, had been to Europe three times before and had never got past the third qualifying round of the Conference League.

Where the table stands

Azerbaijan is 0.188 behind Israel in 24th, and Sabah is the only one of its four clubs still playing. A win in the group stage is worth two points to the association and a draw one, which with four clubs entered is 0.500 and 0.250 on the season coefficient. A single draw would take Azerbaijan past Israel’s present figure, though Israel has a club still playing too.

Coefficients 2026/27

top 25 of 55

#	Country	Five-season total	22/23	23/24	24/25	25/26	Season	Clubs
1	England	105.574	23.000	17.375	29.464	28.680	7.055	9 → 9
2	Italy	90.017	22.357	21.000	21.875	19.000	5.785	7 → 7
3	Spain	84.868	16.571	16.062	23.892	22.093	6.250	8 → 8
4	Germany	83.259	17.125	19.357	18.421	21.785	6.571	7 → 7
5	France	70.582	12.583	16.250	17.928	18.321	5.500	7 → 7
6	Portugal	66.550	12.500	11.000	16.250	20.500	6.300	5 → 5
7	Belgium	60.850	14.200	14.400	15.650	11.400	5.200	5 → 5
8	Netherlands	54.062	13.500	10.000	15.250	9.979	5.333	6 → 6
9	Türkiye	51.275	11.800	12.000	10.300	11.075	6.100	5 → 4
10 ▲2	Greece	45.812	2.125	11.400	12.687	14.200	5.400	5 → 4
11	Czechia	45.525	6.750	13.500	10.550	11.025	3.700	5 → 4
12 ▼2	Poland	45.525	7.750	6.875	11.750	15.750	3.400	5 → 2
13 ▲1	Norway	39.812	5.750	8.000	11.812	8.050	6.200	5 → 4
14 ▼1	Denmark	39.306	5.900	8.500	7.656	12.250	5.000	4 → 4
15	Cyprus	35.193	5.100	3.750	10.562	12.156	3.625	4 → 2
16	Switzerland	30.700	8.500	5.200	7.050	6.200	3.750	4 → 2
17 ▲1	Hungary	28.312	5.875	4.500	6.625	7.437	3.875	4 → 1
18 ▲2	Austria	28.250	4.900	4.800	9.650	4.100	4.800	5 → 3
19 ▲3	Croatia	26.906	3.375	5.875	5.875	7.031	4.750	4 → 2
20 ▼1	Scotland	26.450	3.500	6.400	9.250	5.000	2.300	5 → 2
21 ▼4	Sweden	26.250	6.250	1.875	11.375	5.000	1.750	4 → 1
22 ▼1	Romania	25.125	6.250	3.250	7.750	5.750	2.125	4 → 1
23	Ukraine	24.837	5.700	4.100	3.600	8.312	3.125	4 → 1
24 ▲2	Azerbaijan	24.187	4.000	5.875	2.875	5.812	5.625	4 → 1
25	Israel	24.125	6.250	8.750	2.875	2.875	3.375	4 → 1

Reading the numbers

Everything here is as the table stood on 27 August 2026, the last day of qualifying, with the 2026/27 season under way. The lead in the season coefficient says more about the calendar than about the season: Azerbaijan’s clubs have played their qualifying rounds, most clubs from the leading associations have not started, and England’s season coefficient for 2025/26 was 28.680. The counts of clubs and rounds above run across the whole archive; the points do not, because the table has been scored in several ways since 1955/56, and every figure quoted here comes from the current scoring. The 2026/27 table and the club pages linked above carry the full figures.