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The Europa League - Sh1t got real...

Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Improve the Europa League, hmmm, how about scrapping it AND the Champions league and going back to how it used to be, League Champions play in the European Cup in an unseeded knock out tournament and reinstate the old Cup-Winner's Cup and UEFA Cup.

Of course this ain't going to happen as the only thing that matters is money not the quality of the competition.

4th place = CHAMPION's league pah flimflam of the highest order.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Just get rid, it's a total irrelevance. Enlarge the CL if they really think 5th 6th and 7th in the EPL really deserve European football.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

camspur said:
Improve the Europa League, hmmm, how about scrapping it AND the Champions league and going back to how it used to be, League Champions play in the European Cup in an unseeded knock out tournament and reinstate the old Cup-Winner's Cup and UEFA Cup.

Of course this ain't going to happen as the only thing that matters is money not the quality of the competition.

4th place = CHAMPION's league pah flimflam of the highest order.
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You end up with a better Uefa Cup than European Cup then.

In the European Cup you'd have:
Emirates Marketing Project (currently 2nd in their league 15 points behind)
Real Madrid (currently 2nd in their league 13 points behind)
Dortmund (currently 2nd in their league 20 points behind)
Juventus (currently 1st in their league 9 points ahead)
Montpellier (currently 7th in their league 19 points behind)

And a load of other teams from minor leagues.
You could win it by beating one other decent side.

The reason people like the the Champion's league is because its the best quality competition in the world. The old European Cup never was that. The World Cup was considered a better quality competition.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

in the heyday (if you are in your mid thirties that is) of European football the Uefa cup was mostly the equal, and often superior to, the European Cup, and football was better for it
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Either make it the format of CL or a cup competition

I think with a cup competition it wont be worthwhile as there may well be less money but much more excitement
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

AdamB said:
Two things:
- CL drop outs don't enter into the Europa
- Europa winners get CL entry for the following season
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Exactly that. Why on earth it didn't happen long, long ago is beyond me.

Having teams "drop" into it really devalues it. just demotes it eevn further. We all know it's not as good as the Champions League anyway. But dropping teams into it adds nothing, to the champions league or too the Europa League. Al it does it end up with a load of teams in it who are usually compeiting for the league anyway and don't care about it what so ever.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Modric THFC said:
You end up with a better Uefa Cup than European Cup then.

In the European Cup you'd have:
Emirates Marketing Project (currently 2nd in their league 15 points behind)
Real Madrid (currently 2nd in their league 13 points behind)
Dortmund (currently 2nd in their league 20 points behind)
Juventus (currently 1st in their league 9 points ahead)
Montpellier (currently 7th in their league 19 points behind)

And a load of other teams from minor leagues.
You could win it by beating one other decent side.

The reason people like the the Champion's league is because its the best quality competition in the world. The old European Cup never was that. The World Cup was considered a better quality competition.
Click to expand...


I don't know so much about the World Cup being considered better quality but the Uefa Cup was always a harder competition to win. More rounds with more teams who were of a similar standard to the team that had won their league. This is why I say that if you allow two teams from the stronger nations then you maintain the high standard whilst increasing the standard of the Europa.

As it stands, using my philosophy, then you would have in the Europa League next season for example: Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs, Leverkusen, Schalke, Freiburg, Valencia, Atl Madrid, Real Sociedad, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, Lyon, St Etienne, Nice, PSV, Feyenoord, Twente, Fenerbahce, Genk.

With these teams going into the champions league: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man Utd, Emirates Marketing Project, Juventus, Napoli, Bayern Munich, Dortmund, PSG, Marseille, Ajax, Porto, Benfica, Galatasaray, Anderlecht.

A couple of seasons of entrants like that would soon bring the glamour back to the Europa League and increase revenues. The Champions League entrants don't look too diminished either.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

galeforce said:
in the heyday (if you are in your mid thirties that is) of European football the Uefa cup was mostly the equal, and often superior to, the European Cup, and football was better for it
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It was, and since then the competition has been systematically destroyed as the Champions League has grown and grown. While that tournament remains the major cash cow, the Europa League will always be secondary. You can see it in the sponsors, the TV networks, the kick off times, and to an extent the teams involved. Allowing CL teams to drop into it shows it is the little brother of the CL, and a distraction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Europa_League#Prize_money

Meanwhile, winning the CL is about 70m. Each place in the Premier League is worth something like 750k. Emirates Marketing Project got 60m for winning the league last season. Wolves for 30m for being relegated. 485k for each televised games.

http://www.sportingintelligence.com...gue-prize-and-tv-payments-for-2011-12-150501/

While the disparity exists, the Europa League will continue to be a secondary competition comparable to the Capital One Cup. If Basel reach the final, they will have played 21 Europa League games. Almost 2/3 of a league season.

The best ideas in this thread are to remove the CL teams and increase the prize money, heighten the importance of the tournament. Don't make it a drop out or nearly-club competition. Or remove the group stage and have a large knock out, least then it will be different instead of just a B Team Champions League.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

firefly said:
The Champions League itself is in spite of its name a cup competition rather than a league.
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Yeah - I meant as in a cup competition like the FA Cup - knockout from the first to the last round.

CL is a cup competition but is essentially a league at its commencement.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Here's a radical idea, how about making it 16 teams (preliminary rounds for the low seeded teams to qualify), two leagues of 8 teams with the winner of each league playing off for the trophy in a final or the top two from each league making up semi finals.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

SpursLodge said:
Here's a radical idea, how about making it 16 teams (preliminary rounds for the low seeded teams to qualify), two leagues of 8 teams with the winner of each league playing off for the trophy in a final or the top two from each league making up semi finals.
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Two leagues of eight teams means you'd play 14 games, considering that you'd do home and away. Bit too over the top in my mind.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

Hully said:
Just get rid, it's a total irrelevance. Enlarge the CL if they really think 5th 6th and 7th in the EPL really deserve European football.
Click to expand...

This.

It's actually a bogey prize.

I'd rather we finish 6th than 5th if we don't make the top 4.

One way they could improve it would be to edit the camera shots significantly. For example, in our game against Inter they should have arranged the cameras so the crowd was not visible in any way. And the commentators could be instructed to tell the audience the stadium is bursting to rafters and flares are going off everywhere. And to the TV coverage they could have added crowd scenes taken from our game against them in the CL.

Another way to improve it would be to make a free course of hypnotherapy available to all supporters whose clubs qualify for it, with them being hypnotised to believe it's a really incredible tournament, as big as the World Cup.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

I don't see the problem with having a massive Europa League. It helps fund some other clubs in worse off leagues, like Romania, Belarus, Czech Republic, give them all a little bit of the UEFA gold pot. I do think they should give a little bit more cash as incentives to enter the Europa League though, since teams from Holland, Portugal, Italy are starting to un-offically boycott it to help their fixtures.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

To fix it, you actually need to fix both (and domestic cups)

Actually fairly simple concept

- Get rid of the CL drop in teams
- Cut the format down by a round
- give the winner a CL spot

For the CL

- Stop the brick about 2nd/3rd/4th place teams getting a spot
- Turn it into a Cup Winners Cup, e.g. from England -> EPL winner, FA Cup winner, League Cup winner +optional if an English team wins Europa

You will put value back in domestic cups
You will put value back in Europa as "bigger brand teams will be in it more often, e.g. Scum/Pool would have been in it for many more attempts"
You break up the monopoly on the larger CL money pool creating a vicious circle (unless you win something, you don't get CL, you don't get CL money)

For me that creates a football ecosystem where winning means something again, vs. finishing 3rd/4th.
 
Re: Improving the 'Europa League'

The Europa League can be tinkered with. The Champions League cannot, due to the financial clout of the usual suspects.

1)Stop CL drop-outs being given free byes into the EL.

2)Increase the number of teams in the competition (proper, i.e post qualifying rounds) to 64. (Wait, hear me out)

3)Implement straight knock-out rounds with two legs and penalties.

4)Round of 64, Round of 32, Round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals.

5)coefficient system applies in the qualifying rounds (i.e, higher rated countries/ clubs higher in league drop in later), and seeding system occurs in the first and second rounds (to avoid teams from the same country being drawn against each other too quickly).

6)Increase competition participation money: at the moment it barely covers the cost of actually holding the matches themselves for the bigger clubs.

Results:

1) No more safety net for CL clubs to fall back on that they might not actually want in the first place (see Mikel's comments about the EL), increasing 'status' of EL.

2) Allows Platini to fulfill his pet dream of getting more teams from smaller countries to participate in European competitions.

3 & 4) Shortens competition, which is essential to give it any semblance of balance. Now it's 11 games to win it, which is eminently manageable for most clubs and shorter than both the current iteration of the EL (15 games from the group stage onwards) and the current CL (13 games from group stage onwards).

5) Allows current co-efficient and seeding system to still be applied to the EL, granting 'bigger' clubs some measure of safety in the draws and allowing commercial sponsors to feel confident that there will still be bigger clubs participating in the competition in the latter stages, increasing brand visibility for them.

6)Makes clubs take it more seriously, especially the smaller clubs for whom a long-run can mean a massive revenue increase: consequently, competitiveness increases.

To do all this, you will however need more traditionally 'big' clubs in it, to maintain commercial interest in the competition (after all, those are the clubs with the most fans), and that means scrapping a CL place in some countries. Ergo, you will have to make one change to the CL:

Fourth place for Germany, Spain, and England is scrapped. Now, the top two get direct entry to CL group stages, and third-place goes into the CL play-offs. Fourth place is designated an extra EL place. Similarly, in 3 CL place leagues like Italy and France, first place goes into the CL and second place into the CL-playoffs. Third place is added to the EL list. For 2 CL place countries, the top one gets direct entry/play-offs and the second goes into the EL. The co-efficient system will have to be altered to increase the EL's impact, and less games will be played in the CL, which is a downside. however, this can be compensated for by increasing the money available to the CL play-off rounds and the participation money for the competition proper, allowing for the transition to a 3-team group system (with 1st and 2nd going through) or a 4-team system but with fewer groups.

It's a big shake-up, but it has to be done.
 
The Europa League - brick got real...

Europa League winners could earn Champions League place

Uefa will announce on Friday whether the Europa League winners will be rewarded with a Champions League qualifying spot in future.

The move would be designed to boost interest in Europe's secondary club tournament.

The governing body further declared that Berlin's Olympic Stadium will host the Champions League final in 2015.

That year's Europa League decider will be at Warsaw's National Stadium, which staged the opening game of Euro 2012.

"Two beautiful venues for our finals for 2015," said Uefa general secretary Gianni Infantino.

Last year, the 2014 Champions League final was awarded to Lisbon and the Europa League final to Turin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22640095
 
Re: The Europa League - brick could be about to get real...

Also appear to be considering whether to award a Champions League qualifying place to teams finishing fifth in the bigger European leagues. Beneficial to us, yes, but why bother with any other competition then?
 
Re: The Europa League - brick could be about to get real...

funster said:
Also appear to be considering whether to award a Champions League qualifying place to teams finishing fifth in the bigger European leagues. Beneficial to us, yes, but why bother with any other competition then?
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How do you know this?
 
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