Europe’s second club competition has undergone a format change this season – FFT explains what to watch out for
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The draw for the new league phase of the Europa League takes place this week, when Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur will find out their opponents.
The two clubs both enter the competition in the league phase, with the draw taking place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on Friday, August 30, from noon UK time.
The draw will be shown live on UEFA.com as well as the TNT Sports YouTube channel, while it will also be broadcast live on TNT Sports for subscribers.
The format
Unlike recent seasons, the Europa League proper will not begin with 32 clubs this season. Instead, it has increased to 36.
The group phase is no more, so forget the traditional groups of four. It has been replaced by the ‘league phase’ – every team involved goes into one big 36-team division.
At the end of the 36-teams-in-one-group group stage, the overall top eight will advance straight to the last 16. The sides finishing ninth to 24th will go into a play-off round, while the clubs finishing 25th to 36th will be eliminated. The play-off round will be seeded: ninth or 10th will face 23rd or 24th, determined by a draw, while 11th or 12th will face 21st or 22nd, and so on.
The winners of each play-off round tie will progress to the last 16 – also seeded, to ensure that the team that finished first in the league phase will face one that finished 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th. The side that finished eighth in the league phase will play a team that finished ninth, 10th, 23rd or 24th.
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Previously, there was an open draw from the quarter-finals onwards. That’s gone, too. Again, it’s seeded, like a tennis draw, so that the teams who finished first and second in the league phase will be in opposite halves of the draw, unable to play each other until the final in Bilbao on May 21, and unable to face the teams who finished third or fourth until the semis.
It means that the finishing positions of the league phase could be critical to who ends up winning the competition.
More matches
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The league phase now has 144 matches, up from 96. That’s because not only are there more teams, but each club will play eight fixtures in the league phase, compared to six as before.
Whereas clubs previously played the same opposition both home and away, the eight matches will now be against eight different opponents – four at home, four away.
Each team will play two games against teams from pot one (one at home, one away), two from pot two, two from pot three and two from pot four.
The extra two matchdays will take place in late January. Then comes the draw for the play-off round, with those matches taking place in February before the last 16 starts in March.
To give European competitions a proper launch week of their own this season, the first matches of the Europa League take place on September 25 and 26, a week after the start of the Champions League.
No dropdown
Since 1999, teams who finished third in their Champions League group headed into the UEFA Cup or Europa League, and in 25 seasons, that produced nine UEFA Cup or Europa League winners who had started the campaign in the Champions League group stage – among them, Chelsea in 2013 and Sevilla twice.
That dropdown has now been discontinued - there is no way for a club to transfer from the Champions League to the Europa League mid-season, or from the Europa League to the Conference League either.
How will the draw be done?
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The 36 teams are divided into four pots of nine clubs. Manchester United, Tottenham, Rangers, Roma, Lazio, Porto and Eintracht Frankfurt are among the clubs to have already been confirmed as top seeds, prior to this week’s final round of qualifying fixtures.
Olympiacos and Lyon will be among the second seeds, while a whole host of other clubs are also confirmed to be in the league phase, but their seeding position has depended on this week’s qualifying fixtures.
Those clubs are Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Real Sociedad, AZ Alkmaar, Union Saint-Gilloise, Dynamo Kyiv, Malmo, Athletic Bilbao, Hoffenheim, Nice and FC Twente. Further clubs join the league phase after this week’s qualifying fixtures.
The seedings are less important than previously, because each team plays two other clubs from every pot anyway – unlike previously, when they could not face a team from the same pot.
That means that every club in the draw will be a possible opponent for Manchester United and Tottenham, including Mourinho’s Fenerbahce, with one exception.
The two English clubs cannot play each other, with teams from the same country unable to meet until the knockout phase play-offs.
Chris joined FourFourTwo in 2015 and has reported from 20 countries, in places as varied as Jerusalem and the Arctic Circle. He's interviewed Pele, Zlatan and Santa Claus (it's a long story), as well as covering the World Cup, Euro 2020 and the Clasico. He previously spent 10 years as a newspaper journalist, and completed the 92 in 2017.
