The UEFA Executive Committee Tuesday made a decision to change the seeding system for the Euro cups, as suggested by Rosenborg and other of Europe's smaller clubs.

Up until now, each club's ranking points has consisted of the club's own team coefficients added with half the counrty coefficients of the home country. Rosenborg has not gathered all that many points in European games, and thus RBK's ranking (and thereby seeding) in the cup draws in Champion's League and the UEFA Cup has been largely influenced by other Norwegian teams' success - or lack thereof - in Europe.

During the UEFA European Club Forum in Barcelona in February, it was suggested to reduce the importance of the county coefficients. The suggestion was that only 25 per cent of the country coefficients should be added to the team coefficients, and not 50 per cent as is done today.

At yesterday's Executive Committee meeting in Dublin the UEFA top leaders considered this proposal. UEFA Chairman Lennart Johannsson & Co then agreed upon a lesser reduction; down to 33 per cent. The new system will start being valid for the forthcoming season, Danish news agency Ritzau reports.

This is happy news for Rosenborg! Though, the change is not made retroactive, as the people of "Brakka", RBK's club house, had hoped. As a result Rosenborg will stay at 56th place in the UEFA Team Ranking when late summer's qualification matches starts.

All in all it is still unclear wether RBK will be seeded or not for the 3rd qualifying round for autumn's Champion's League. If many of the big clubs will need to qualify, Rosenborg will probably end up in the unseeded group. The Lerkendal club will also have to enter the second qualifying stage.

As you all know (!) Norway currently is number 15 in The UEFA Country Ranking. This means that both gold and silver medalists of this year's Tippeliga will be able to try and qualify for Champion's League 2005/06. The winner (read: Rosenborg) enters 3rd qualifying stage, while the silver medalionist has to try themselves in both the 2nd and 3rd stages, like RBK have to this year.