Norway lead Respect Fair Play league

Norway head UEFA's interim Respect Fair Play ranking, which takes into account UEFA club and national-team matches up to and including 31 December 2008.

Three UEFA Europa League places
In the end-of-year table, Norway lead Denmark and Scotland in the race for three extra places in the 2009/10 UEFA Europa League first qualifying round. The standings are drawn up from all European competition matches from the period between 1 May 2008 to 30 April 2009.

Minimum 25 matches
For the intermediary ranking, only associations having played a minimum of 25 games are taken into account. This cut-off point is calculated by dividing the total number of UEFA matches by the number of national associations.

Criteria changes
The UEFA Executive Committee endorsed a change to the criteria for allocating the additional places reserved to Respect Fair Play winners in next season's UEFA Europa League. As defined in the club competitions regulations, the three places in the UEFA Europa League will automatically go to the three best-placed national associations in the Respect Fair Play ranking, provided they attain an average of 8.0 points or more. This means that contrary to previous editions, there will not be a draw to determine which two national associations will have the right to enter an additional team on top of the outright winners.

Delegates' assessments
The Fair Play assessments are made by the official UEFA delegates on criteria such as positive play, respect of the opponent, respect of the referee, behaviour of the crowd and of the team officials, as well as cautions and dismissals.

Domestic Fair Play winners
The three associations which are allocated an additional UEFA Europa League place will be entitled to enter the club that has won the domestic top-division fair play competition. If this club has already qualified for a UEFA competition, the second-placed team in the domestic fair play ranking may be entered and, should they also have already qualified, the third-placed side would be considered and so forth. It is even possible for a team that has been relegated to the second highest division to qualify for the UEFA Europa League, as a result of its exemplary fair play conduct during the domestic championship, provided of course that they hold the mandatory UEFA club licence.

Click here to see UEFA's Respect Fair Play intermediary ranking for 2008/09.