Tomorrow starts the most recent iteration of UEFA’s second highest club competition: the UEFA Europa League. Born out of the ashes of the old UEFA Cup, the Europa League pits 54 of Europe’s high-to-mid level clubs against each other in the group format we’ve all become accustomed to. But is this competition worth fighting for, or is it simply a way for UEFA to fill Thursday television time-slots?
2013/14 Europa League winners Sevilla CF pose with the cup after their game against Benfica
The answer is ambiguous. The competition does have its merits, including increased television revenue and ticket sales for clubs who might not otherwise have it. As well, lesser known Europa League participants do have the opportunity to play some high-level opponents, allowing their fans to experience what they would consider the upper echelon of European club competition.
But, of course, with all due respect to its participants, the competition is not made up of the elite. The Europa League is full of teams that placed fourth to seventh in the most competitive leagues, including England, Spain, and Italy, as well as teams that failed in their quest to progress successfully through the Champions League qualifying rounds. As well, included in the Europa League are domestic league cup winners, which are often small upsets since large clubs prioritize European competition and their league placement over winning their respective league cup (even with Europa League qualification as their prize for doing so). Quite simply, the competition is full of second-class teams of various quality.
Then Atlético de Madrid players Radamel Falcao (Central, now Manchester United) and Thibaut Courtois (Right, now Chelsea) with their teammate Koke after winning the 2011-12 Europa League against Athletic Bilbao. Atlético, now European elites, came in seventh in the league the year prior.
At no time is this truer than once the competition progresses past the Group Stages. In the first knockout round, UEFA brings in a whole new set of 8 participants from an unlikely source: the third-placed teams from the Champions League group stages. The Europa League becomes somewhat of a farce at this point; it becomes a breeding ground of European club mediocrity.
Just look at some of this year’s participants. To show that I mean no disrespect to any team, I’ll start with one dear to my heart: Inter Milan. I Nerazzurri are three time champions of the competition, but have the same record in the Champions League. The fallen Italian giants are in a resurgent phase, but came in fifth in Serie A last term. In tomorrow’s match, they meet Ukrainian side Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk at their home-away-from-home stadium in Kiev. How did they both get here, you ask? Inter qualified for the Europa League by beating Icelandic side Stjarnan 9-0 on aggregate, while Dnipro qualified by losing 2-0 on aggregate to FC Copenhagen in the Champions League Third Qualifying Round (they finished runners-up in the Ukrainian Premier League) and then beating Croatia’s Hajduk Split 2-1 on aggregate. In their group, these two will also play Ligue 1 fourth-placed team Saint-Étienne and Azerbaijani-champions FK Qarabag.
I hope that, despite the quality and potential of these clubs, the mediocrity shown here isn’t lost in translation.
This also shows another flaw of the competition: the distance which teams must go to play one another. Inter will have to travel round trip from Milan to Kiev, Baku, and central France in order to play their opponents, and that’s after having qualified by flying to and from Iceland! That distance is something that Champions League squads don’t usually have to deal with (those playing the competition’s Russian participants notwithstanding). Couple that with the fact that Europa League matches happen on Thursdays, and that league matches usually happen on Saturdays and Sundays, and you have a poor combination, that can be basically broken down to this:
Large squads must travel long distances to play mediocre squads on days that do not provide sufficient rest time for those same squads to play effectively in the league.
What does this mean for the Europa League, then? It means that clubs don’t have a reason to prioritize it, in all honesty. Smaller clubs don’t have the resources to have as large or deep squads as their larger European counterparts, and the larger clubs are probably too busy focusing on qualifying for the Champions League via their league position to commit their best players to Europa League matches. Yet another reason to skip watching the matches.
And yet, the competition does have a glimmer of hope. UEFA’s current iteration of the competition may have just given clubs a reason to care. Forget filling your trophy cabinet with Europa League trophies just for the sake of having silverware. Now, the trophy means something; it has a purpose.
That silver cup is now one lucky club’s ticket into the Champions League. Finally, a reason to want to win. A reason to commit resources to the competition. A reason for fans to want their team to keep progressing. For clubs in the Europa League, they now have as much reason to push for a win in that competition as in their own domestic league.
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f they win the Europa League, riches ensue. And that’s not a joke. For the teams in last year’s Champions League, a pot of €904 million was given out. And that’s not even including the increased ticket revenues and television rights. Teams got €8.6 million just for participating in the Group Stages, not including any performance bonuses. Champions League winners Real Madrid CF earned a neat €57.414 million, while David Moyes’ flopping Manchester United team – who failed to qualify for either competition with their seventh place Premier League finish – pocketed almost €45 million. By contrast, 2013/14 Europa League winners Sevilla CF made only €14.6 million, a paltry amount considering the resources that they committed to winning the cup.
So what’s the next step? How can UEFA make the competition more palatable? Well, they can’t change the fact that the elite clubs will always be in the Champions League. And they can’t help that the exciting matches of the Europa League don’t really come until the Champions League third-placed teams enter the competition. But now that the competition has a point to it, a real end goal to strive for, UEFA has to make it so that clubs can compete in the competition equitably to their Champions League counterparts.
If Champions League clubs can have three or four days to recover for their league matches, so should Europa League squads. After all, the effect of playing such games consistently so late in the week is that these squads don’t necessarily do as well in their respective leagues. It almost keeps clubs in that upper-mediocre spot where they qualify for the Europa League. UEFA needs to move Champions League games to Tuesdays and Thursdays, and allow Europa League squads to play on Wednesdays. The deeper squads of the Champions League shouldn’t have a problem with this, and it will allow the smaller squads of the Europa League to be at their best during their league games.
Will UEFA do this? Probably not, or at least not soon. But at least the Europa League is on its way to being on equal footing with its big brother.
This fan of a Europa League team is finally excited for a match. Well…ask me how excited I am after the match, OK?
Power Forward 