Emma Hayes described it as “ignorant and arrogant” to suggest the Champions League qualifying routes do not yield the best teams reaching the group stage. The Chelsea manager was speaking after her Manchester United counterpart, Marc Skinner, apologised for “any offence caused” when he said after his team’s Champions League qualifying defeat by Paris Saint-Germain that some of the clubs who had progressed were not good enough to be playing at that level. “I think that’s ignorant and arrogant all at once for us to say that,” said Hayes, whose side were one of only four teams, with Barcelona, Lyon, Bayern Munich, not forced to go through qualifying. “Roma and Benfica are two teams who won their leagues – they deserve perhaps to go straight into a group competition. But this isn’t about my opinion, this is what the format is and we have to play that.” Skinner had expressed frustration at having been drawn against the two-times runners-up PSG in qualifying as a part of the league pathway, where teams who finished second and third in the leagues with the highest Uefa coefficients compete for a place. In the other qualifying pathway, the champions pathway, league winners from countries with a lower coefficient face off for a place in the group stage. The process favours league winners over teams who finished second or third in the most competitive leagues. The champions of Portugal (Benfica), the Netherlands (Ajax), Italy (Roma), Austria (St Pölten), the Czech Republic (Slavia Prague), Norway (Brann) and Sweden (Rosengård) qualified via the champions path. “It’s easy to twist words, but if there was any offence taken then I am sorry for that,” Skinner said. “That isn’t what I meant. What I meant was I believe there should be a broader scale of teams and there should be more teams in this competition so we can then see where the elite level lies within Europe.” On whether he understood the angry reaction in some quarters to his remarks given United have existed for only five years and have not won anything beyond the Championship, he said: “Again, I apologise if I have caused offence. To clarify, congratulations to the teams that have qualified, there was no offence intended, but when I talk about those comments it is about how hard it is to qualify for Europe from our league. “We have to qualify from a harder group [of teams] and I think that if we got the chance to play [a wider breadth of] teams then we’d see where we’re at.” Hayes stressed the importance of earning the right to progress in the Champions League, pointing to Chelsea’s second-round exit to Wolfsburg in 2015-16, then first-round defeat by Wolfsburg the following year, before they progressed to the 2017-18 semi-final. “That improved our coefficiency, it got us some points on the board, and guess what, we had to earn that, over three years,” she said. “Much like how Paris FC had to earn [their group stage entry this year], or whomever for that matter. So, I think we have to respect the format, it’s important to say that, we all knew what it was.” Hayes said, on the day Chelsea were drawn in a group with Real Madrid, Paris FC and Häcken, that the format of Champions League qualifying did need scrutiny. “Absolutely we need to look at that,” she said. “Do we need to look at that in line with the growth of the women’s game to say: ‘Well, actually, there’s a lot more investment across many leagues that perhaps we should consider a format that’s similar to that of the men’s competition, where it’s group stages from the off but maybe larger?’ “But also, we have to look at the smaller nations and the smaller countries: they deserve the opportunity and have the right to be in it as much as any English team does … This is the Champions League, it’s tough against any team you play against to be honest with you.” Arsenal’s manager, Jonas Eidevall, whose side were knocked out by Paris FC, said WSL clubs were to blame for the conundrum they find themselves in in Europe. “If Wolfsburg had beaten Barcelona in the Champions League final, the WSL wouldn’t have had any direct spots for the group stages as our champions Chelsea would have needed to qualify,” he said. “We’re the number four ranking league in Europe [in Uefa’s coefficient rankings]. Why are we number four? Because the English teams have done worse than the Spanish, the German and the French teams have been doing for the last five years. We need to understand that that’s our starting point.”