Understanding the Europa League

The Europa League competition is ranked second in European football, and it comes after the Champions’ League. The competition was established in 1971, and it is only meant for teams that participate in European leagues. The competition acts as a qualifier for the Champions’ League and also the UEFA Super Cup.

The defending champions of the competition are Chelsea, and the team with most titles is Sevilla currently at five trophies. There are 48 teams that participate in the competition’s group stages and other eight that join at the knock out stages from the Champions’ League.

Groups

Currently, there are usually 12 groups, each consisting of four teams. Each group produces the best who proceed to the round of 32 stages. From its name, there are 32 teams. 24 are from the groups and 8 come from the champions’ league groups for being the best losers in their group. From this stage, each match has two legs, and the loser in both gets knocked out. The next stage is the round of 16, followed by the quarter-finals, and the semi-finals and the ultimate stage is the finals where the winner becomes the winner of the competition.

The winner of this competition gets a direct qualification for Europe’s top competition which is the Champions’ League. The winner also plays the UEFA Super Cup at the start of the following season. Qualifying for the competition varies for various leagues, but mostly the number of teams that get is the difference. The qualifiers of the competition are in five rounds namely the preliminary, first round, second round, third round, and the playoffs.

The Europa League title has been won 28 times. 13 teams have won the title at least twice. Bertoni designed the Europa trophy, and it was crafted for the 1972 UEFA cup finals. It weighs 15 kg. The anthem used in the competition was composed by MassiveMusic during the beginning of 2018/19 season.