If you’re a college basketball program, your ultimate goal is to receive a bid for the NCAA Tournament. You’re playing all season just for that berth, and you want to get in. Small schools want in, big schools need in; it’s part of what defines your season’s success. And while only one school can ultimately win, a deep run into the latter stages – especially for an underdog – can turn an also-ran into a respected program.
The same dynamic exists with clubs and the UEFA Champions League; it’s pretty much everything the top teams in Europe are shooting for. But what happens when that dream isn’t plausible?
If this were college basketball, you’d hope for an invitation to the NIT; in professional soccer in Europe, you’re hoping to earn a Europa League bid. Let’s talk about the Europa League after the jump.
Date Started: The Europa League proper has only been around in it’s current iteration since September; however, in terms of format, the Europa League follows the structure of the old UEFA Cup pretty much exactly. The UEFA Cup has gone through a couple of different versions since it was founded in 1971, and it would be fair to say that the Europa League is really just the latest rebranding of the tournament; since UEFA’s rolled all the historical records from the UEFA Cup into the Europa League, it’s fair to say that they’re the same thing.
The format has undergone a lot of tweaks since 1971. Initially the UEFA Cup was a knockout tournament, where everything (including the final) was played over two legs. This continued through to the 1997-98 season, where the final was moved to a neutral ground and became a one-off match.
The tournament retained the traditional two-legged knockout system until the 2004-05 season. About that time, UEFA decided to completely overhaul the tournament so that it resembled the Champions League; that meant, among other things, that a bajillion teams from each association qualified, that there were four rounds of knockouts before getting to a group stage with five other teams (each of whom you’d play once), with the top three in every group progressing to a big-ass round of 32 (that included the eight third-placed Champions League group finishers), upon which time it went back to being a knockout tournament.
The qualification process and tournament format this year has been tweaked; we’ll get to what that means in a minute. Three teams (Juventus, Inter, and Liverpool) are tied for the most Europa League/UEFA Cup wins; each of those teams has won it three times.
Who’s Eligible: Okay, this is where things get a little tricky. Because it’s a little confusing, I’m only going to discuss how it works now; it’s been different in the past, but we’re not going to get into that.
Right now, this is how the bids are allocated to the different UEFA member nations:
- 4 bids: Ukraine, Netherlands, Romania
- 3 bids: England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Scotland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Norway, Austria, Serbia, Israel, Cyprus, Sweden, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Finland, Lithuania, Ireland, Latvia, Slovenia, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovinia, Hungary, Iceland, Moldova, Georgia, Macedonia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Albania, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Wales, Northern Ireland, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Malta
- 1 bid: Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino
That works out to be something like 156 teams. Unlike the Champions League, however, that doesn’t automatically mean that the top three finishers that don’t go to the Champions League are on to Europe. Instead, preference is given to the winner of the domestic cup tournament…meaning that a team not in the top flight can actually qualify for European competition if they can win the cup.
Additionally, UEFA grants three more berths to teams that have finished high in the “UEFA Fair Play” ranking. This is basically a ranking that determines how well behaved teams and their fans are; every league keeps track of points, and every league is also ranked against other leagues. The three top performing associations will then send their best behaved team that hasn’t qualified for Europe already on to the first knockout round.
Confused? Me too. Let’s play “hypothetical situation” with the Premier League to talk about who would get berths if the league ended right now. We also have to make some guesses about both the Carling Cup and FA Cup; let’s assume, for now, that Manchester City wins the Carling Cup and that Tottenham beats Aston Villa to win the FA Cup. Let’s also assume that England finishes first in UEFA Fair Play ranking.
- Bid #1: This would go to Tottenham, the winners of the FA Cup. Fortunately for Tottenham, they’re in third place and are already in the Champions League, meaning that they can’t accept the bid. Instead, this bid goes to Aston Villa, who were the runners-up for the FA Cup.
- Bid #2: This bid would go to Manchester City, who won the Carling Cup (for England and France, the winners of the League Cup also go on to the Europa League; runners up – as in the situation with Bid #1 – are not eligible).
- Bid #3 would go to Liverpool, who’re currently in fifth place.
- Bid #4 doesn’t automatically exist, but since England won the UEFA Fair Play ranking in our imaginary scenario they get an extra spot. That spot goes to the best behaved team not already qualified for European competition (provided that team’s score is higher than 8.0) Based on the Fair Play Table, that team is Burnley (because Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea have already qualified).
I’m pretty sure this is right.
And just when you think you’ve wrapped your head around that, try to handle this: every individual association can come up with their own tiebreaker rules, which means that cup runners-up don’t always go. Furthermore, in the three countries that get one bid, ONLY the cup-winners go (those countries are either too small to have their own league, like Liechtenstein, or are the bottom two countries in Europe).
Oh, also: the eight third-place finishers from the Champions League group stage are thrown into the Round of 32 in the Europa League. That’s you, Liverpool! Smile!
How It Works: Actually, the Europa League mirrors the Champions league in terms of format; there’re four knock out rounds, followed by a group stage, with the winners moving on to another series of knockout rounds. Where it doesn’t mimic the Champions League is the number of teams involved at each stage.
Take the first round as an example. In the first round of the Champions League, four teams were involved. The Europa League had 46 teams. There are eight groups in the Champions League; the Europa League has 12. The first post-group stage round has 16 teams in the Champions League; in the Europa League, they first start with a round of 32.
The other thing that should be mentioned here is the money. If you’ve read Adam’s piece comparing the money between the two competitions, than you’ll know that the participants in the UEFA Cup used to get royally shafted in terms of payouts. This resulted in many teams sending weakened sides to play, especially when they were involved in struggles for league positions. The Europa League was supposed to increase the money involved, but I haven’t seen any figures on that recently.
….wow.
I didn’t realize that Ukraine, Netherlands and Romania get 4 bids to the Europa League, but everyone else (save the smallest of the minnows) gets 3 bids. Why is this?
You have to look at it in relation to the number of Champions League bids they get. Those three each get two CL bids and four EL bids (or six overall); the associations above them get one more CL bid but one less EL bid (still six).
Plus, with the Fair Play slots, there’s still a shot at other countries getting a fourth bid.
I assumed that the Europa League slots would mirror the CL slot distribution – and I guess it did, but not in the way I envisioned.