Europa League

The Europa League is a prestigious tournament second only to the Champions League. Some of the great sides around Europe play each other in the Europa League on Thursday nights. The tournament has had many formats and name changes of the years. It’s previous name was the UEFA Cup, but recently changed to the Europa League in 2009. The tournament started back in 1972, and Tottenham was the first winners of the famous trophy.  To qualify for this tournament, you will need to achieve a certain league position finish in national leagues, and also win national cups.

Changed Formats

When the UEFA Cup started, the tournament was simply just knockout matches over two legs, including the final. It carried on with this format for quite some time, until 1998. Inter Milan played Lazio in the final, but it was just the one match at a neutral venue, which was Parc de Princes for this occasion. The rest of the tournament still followed the same format, where each team would play knock out matches over two legs for about 6 or 7 rounds until the final. The UEFA Champions League had group stages during this time with the elite clubs in that competition. However, UEFA Cup was considering a change of format which is so successful in the Champions League, and that was to have a group stage followed by knock out matches. UEFA Cup changed it’s name to Europa League, partly because of this format change. Football teams always play other countries in the group stage, but in latter stages it is possible to play another team from the same country, and that has happened many times, and sometimes it’s happened in semi finals and finals.

The Current Format

There is 160 teams that take part in the tournament, but most of them play in the qualifying stages, and when the group stages start, is when the tournament has started proper. At this point there are 48 teams, split up to 12 groups of 4. The top 2 teams from each group progress to the next round. Then at this stage, 3rd place teams in the Champions League groups go into the Europa League 3rd round, so there are 32 teams left in it. From this point, teams draw other teams based on where they finished in the group and play two legged knock out matches until the final, which is a one leg match at a neutral venue.

Most Successful Teams

There are currently 3 teams who have won the trophy on 3 occasions and that’s Inter Milan and Juventus from Italy and Liverpool from England. Overall, there has been 26 winners of the 39 years of this cup from different countries over Europe including, England, Italy, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. Italian teams have been the most successful, as their teams combined have won it 9 times, 3 more than 2nd place, which is joint by Germany, England and Spain. Despite being the most successful nation, an Italian club hasn’t won it since 1999, and since then a Spanish club have won it on 5 different occasions.

Europa League 2011/2012

This is the 40th season of the UEFA Cup/ Europa League and the current holders are Porto, who were very impressive in last season’s campaign. They will not be in the tournament however, unless they finish 3rd in their Champions’ League group. Currently Tottenham are one of the strongest sides in the tournament, along with Udinese and Sevilla, as well as others. When the group stage finishes, there will be more teams from the Champions League to make it an even more difficult competition to win. An English side hasn’t won this tournament since Liverpool won it back in 2001, so perhaps they are due a win, as Portuguese and Spanish have been more successful in recent years. The final of this year’s competition is in Budapest, Romania at the Stadionhul National. The qualifying rounds have all been done, and the group stage has been draw, so the proper tournament is starting very soon. Champions League is on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, therefore Europa League will take up the Thursday night slights, and matches generally kick off between 6:00 and 9:00 in all countries.