Alex Domanski/Reuters

The German Bundesliga will have four places in the UEFA Champions League starting with the 2012-13 tournament. Its gain will come at the expense of Italy’s Serie A, which will have its allotment cut to three based on UEFA’s five-year rankings of the leagues’ performances in Europe.

The top three German teams will be guaranteed places in the group stage of the Champions League with a fourth team placed in the earlier-round playoffs — the same as England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga. Serie A will get only two places in the group stage, and a third in the playoffs.

The A.P. explains the math:

Results in Europe this week — including wins for Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen — mean Germany extended its lead over Italy in the UEFA five-year coefficients, according to the league’s website. German clubs have 68,103 points, a lead of 8,122 points over the Serie A (59,981), meaning they can no longer be ousted from third place behind England and Spain.

Although Inter Milan won the Champions League last season, Italian clubs are no longer the dominant presence in European tournaments they once were. According to Reuters, which first reported the revised rankings on Friday:

From 1990-1999 [Serie A] won 13 European trophies — three European Cup/Champions Leagues, seven UEFA Cups and three Cup Winners’ Cups. Since 2000 they have won three Champions Leagues.

This year has been particularly grim. Sampdoria lost in the qualifying stage of the Champions League, and the three Italian teams remaining in the draw — A.C. Milan, Roma and Inter Milan — all lost at home in the first leg of their quarterfinal Round of 16 matchups.

The last Serie A team in the Europa League, Napoli, was eliminated on Thursday. That means that in two weeks, there may be no Italian clubs left in European competition, an unthinkable proposition a decade ago.

Corner kick: Will this lead to more Bundesliga games on United States television at the expense of Serie A, too? That would certainly be good news for fans of the United States national team, since Americans have a much stronger presence in Germany than they have ever had in Italy. But it may take a while: Gol TV, which doesn’t have anything like the visibility of ESPN or even Fox Soccer Channel, owns the U.S. Bundesliga rights until 2012.