26 August ~ Having dispatched the Young Boys of Berne, what will Tottenham Hotspur’s first experience in the Champions League really generate? Qualification is routinely described as worth £30 million but just before the second leg of the play-off, organisers UEFA gave an exact figure. Last season, the four English representatives in the group stages shared a thumping £119m. Manchester United may have bowed out in the quarter-finals but Sir Alex Ferguson’s team earned £37.8m, which is more than any other club bar winners Inter.

UEFA shared out £611m between the 32 teams that took part in the 2009-10 competition. The Glazers pocketed more than last season’s runners-up Bayern Munich thanks to the market pool. This distribution is based on the number of matches screened by broadcasters, such as ITV and Sky; Manchester United’s participation earned £23.6m. In contrast, Maccabi Haifa made the smallest sum of the 32 sides that took part in the group stages, although their total of £7m will still go a long way in Israeli football. Maccabi earned just £1.1m from the market pool, not just due to lack of broadcasting appeal, but because they lost every group match therefore getting the minimum in performance and match bonuses.

Liverpool left the competition at the same stage to drop down into the Europa League having made £16m from the pool; they then picked up a further £2.5m from progressing to the semi-finals of the second-tier competition. There is a huge earnings gap between the blue riband event and the Europa League competition, whose 48 group stage participants shared £110.6m from UEFA.

Europa League winners Atlético Madrid earned £5.2m of that total but had already made £12.4m after being knocked out of the Champions League at the group stages. Fulham picked up £8.2m for qualifying for their first European final – just £1.2m more than Maccabi Haifa got for losing those six Champions League group games. Steve Menary 

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