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Is the Europa League working?

Published by Ian John on December 17, 2009

The advent of the Champions League as a replacement for the old European Cup, has seen the emphasis on other European competitions, and indeed domestic league and cup competitions, change quite markedly over the past few years. The power and the financial strength of the Champions League compared to other competitions, that were once almost equally prestigous, has seen other competitions reduced to a secondary status.

Take the League Cup in England. Now, for many top sides, it is a competition to play youngsters or the reserves. Many managers now do the same in the major domestic cup competitions, such as the FA Cup, certainly in the early rounds. Sir Alex Ferguson picked what was, in effect, a reserve team for the Semi Final with Everton last season. The emphasis now being of course on the league, because the league offers the team a route to qualifying for the Champions League.

In Europe the competition has also suffered. The Cup Winners Cup went by the wayside a long time ago now and the Europa Cup, formerly the UEFA Cup, has been revamped this season to mirror the Champions League format in the hope that it will offer the same sort of prestige as it’s more established counterpart.

Unfortunately I’m not sure the changes have had the desired effect. Many teams in the top leagues, England for certain, who are in the competition have played weakened sides at one stage or another. The choice to play matches on the Thursday night, traditionally a quiet night for football, hasn’t helped either, nor has the scheduling which has seen the matches buffeted about to cater for the more in demand Champions league games.

If UEFA want clubs to take their competitions seriously, then they need to allocate to the Europa league the same kind of funding that the Champions League gets. That comes from increasing the revenue the competition generates and you increase revenue through making the competition attractive to teams, television companies and advertisers. At the moment it is none of these.

So if UEFA want to improve the standing of the Europa cup then they need to make some serious changes. Namely ;

1. The two semi final losers in the competition all qualify for next seasons Champions League competition final qualifying stage.

2. The losing finalists receive byes to the Champions League group stages next season.

3. Prize money is on a par with the Champions League, not only in terms of money awarded from the UEFA Pot, but also the TV revenue is shared more equally between the two competitions.

4. UEFA market the competitions TOGETHER, not as separate identities. Meaning if Sky and ITV get the Champions League, they MUST also show the Europa League with the same level of detailed coverage afforded to the Champions League.

5. Clubs fielding under strength sides in any matches are punished by having their place in next years competition (be it Champions League or UEFA Cup) withdrawn. The only time a team can play an under strength side is if they have already qualified for the latter stages of the competition as I don’t think it is fair to punish teams who have been successful and want to rest players.

6. The eight 3rd placed teams in the Champions League group stages do NOT go into the Europa League. They are just out of European competition full stop. It should not look like a competition for teams that were not good enough.

7. The Europa Cup Final to be played the day before the Champions League final as a prelude and afforded the same level of television coverage across the world.

No doubt the big clubs may not like some of these changes, but I think if they were implemented, we’d see a lot more teams taking the competition a great deal more seriously than we have done. It would have prestige and it would have a meaningful place in the calendar for teams of all sizes.

The Champions League is too powerful, the answer is not in trying to make a competition to support it, the answer is to make one to rival it.

That’s how the UEFA Cup and Cup Winners Cup used to be and UEFA needs to realise this if the competition is to have any viable long term future at all.

Image Courtesy of ***vataa*** at Flickr.com

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