UEFA Announce Conference League:

[robertmac43]

New competition coming to Europe, first competition will have it's final in Albania.

Click to read more...

 

[robertmac43]

More details:

UEFA Europa Conference League: all you need to know

Access List: https://editorial.uefa.com/resource...ac1262ab7c-1000/access_list_2021-22_final.pdf

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

To recap, UCL is the NHL, Europa League is the AHL, and this new tournament is the ECHL. Am I understanding that correctly?

 

[bluesfan94]

Here's the list of teams that make it to the qualifying rounds:

https://editorial.uefa.com/resource...ac1262ab7c-1000/access_list_2021-22_final.pdf

And the group stage is:
32 teams consisting of:
• 17 teams from the UEFA Europa Conference League main path
• 5 teams from the UEFA Europa Conference League champions path
• 10 teams eliminated in the UEFA Europa League play-off

The UEFAECL champions path is drop down from the Champions League champions path and Europa League champions path.

I guess more European soccer is never a bad thing but still.

 

[koyvoo]

Meh. One thing I do like is that it will see the Europa league group stage scaled back from 48 teams to 32 teams.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

So, 8th seeds make this competition?

 

[cgf]

As someone who enjoys the EL as much as I do the CL, this should be fun.

I'm ready for Max to lift the inaugural trophy

 

[robertmac43]

As someone who enjoys the EL as much as I do the CL, this should be fun.

I'm ready for Max to lift the inaugural trophy

See you in the finals

 

[koyvoo]

Bring back the CWC

 

[cgf]

See you in the finals

Then we'll finally have definitive proof that Union > Arsenal

 

[S E P H]

Then we'll finally have definitive proof that Union > Arsenal

I'm pretty sure it's already proven at this point, you lot are in a CL spot are you not?

 

[Savi]

Bring back the CWC

I really liked that tournament, it was perfect for the time when it was played. It would never work now though with the imbalance between leagues in current European football

 

[StevenF1919]

Can't wait to see a finals matchup of two European heavyweights in FC Santa Coloma vs FCI Levadia Tallinn

 

[bluesfan94]

As someone who enjoys the EL as much as I do the CL, this should be fun.

I'm ready for Max to lift the inaugural trophy

Understanding why it isn't, I wish it were on a different day than Europa. On the other hand, this does open up a (much-needed) avenue for Arsenal to make it to Europe........

 

[Blender]

This is the tier 3 competition, right? The seeding list is heavily weighted towards the lower ranked leagues and this provides an opportunity for more clubs to try and qualify for the Europa League by winning this competition.

 

[Blender]

So, 8th seeds make this competition?

For England anyways the winner of the League Cup gets the spot, it's not based on the table. Of course if a team in the CL or EL wins the Cup, it reverts to the table.

 

[robertmac43]

For England anyways the winner of the League Cup gets the spot, it's not based on the table. Of course if a team in the CL or EL wins the Cup, it reverts to the table.

Even more reason to dump all your teams effort in to winning the League Cup!

 

[bluesfan94]

For England anyways the winner of the League Cup gets the spot, it's not based on the table. Of course if a team in the CL or EL wins the Cup, it reverts to the table.

Are you sure? I thought it was the 6th team in the table judging by the access list I posted above.

 

[Blender]

Are you sure? I thought it was the 6th team in the table judging by the access list I posted above.

New Euro tournament for EFL Cup winners

The winners of this season's cup will not qualify for the Europa League as in the past, but will instead go into the Uefa Europa Conference League (UECL).

They will enter at the play-off phase, the round before the group stages.

Uefa's third-tier tournament - which was announced in December 2018 - starts next season.

If the EFL Cup winners qualify for Europe through the league - as has happened every year since 2013 - then the sixth-placed team in the Premier League (or seventh place if the FA Cup is won by a top-six team) will go into the UECL play-offs.

There will still be at least four English teams in the Champions League and two in the Europa League.

 

[hatterson]

Are you sure? I thought it was the 6th team in the table judging by the access list I posted above.

The access list doesn't specify the league cup winners directly since not all leagues have it. In leagues that award a spot to the league cup winners it takes over the bottom spot, which would be this tourney.

 

[hatterson]

I *think* this would open up the potential to have England (or one of the other top 4 leagues) to have 9 teams playing European football.

Top 4 qualify for CL via domestic performance.
English team who is <7th wins the EL, thus qualifying for the CL.
FA cup winner and 5th place play EL.
English team who is <7th wins the Conference League, thus qualifying for the EL.
League cup winner plays in Conference League.

 

[Franck]

This is the tier 3 competition, right? The seeding list is heavily weighted towards the lower ranked leagues and this provides an opportunity for more clubs to try and qualify for the Europa League by winning this competition.

Removing Europa League spots for the smaller leagues and then pretending the new third-rate competition is an "opportunity" is not an improvement.

 

[Albatros]

And not that small either, also leagues like Greece, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden. From now on they will get:

1x Champions League (qual.)
0x Europa League
3x Conference League

 

[Havre]

This is a tricky one for me. Last night I watched Molde slaughter Dundalk in the EL. Molde is hardly a brilliant team so why wouldn't you want Dundalk to play European teams closer to their quality instead? And then you got other Norwegian teams that can't even get to the EL (in theory they should then be worse than Dundalk - that is clearly not the case in reality).

So the EL is stuck in this funny place where not enough teams get in - and too many weak teams are in it. The gap between the best and the worst teams are just too big. This new setup seems to fix quite a lot of that I believe.

A bigger "issue" for me, which I do not know how to fix - if even possible, is that many teams from smaller nations got "generations". When for example Bodø/Glimt completely smashes it in the Norwegian league they are bound to lose "all" their key players (already lost Hauge in the middle of the season). This season Bodø/Glimt could have easily played in the EL and quite potentially qualified to the knock out stages, but they ran into AC Milan in the play-offs and next year that team is probably not anywhere close to being as good as this year (when they are trying to get in to the CL I guess). Not unique to Norway of course. Even Leicester couldn't keep all their players after winning the league. Ideally Bodø/Glimt would have played in the EL this year, but obviously you can't fix that. Having a European competition more tailored to some of the smaller European leagues sounds very reasonable to me. For an English team (or another big league) it is probably a lot less interesting.

 

[Albatros]

This is a tricky one for me. Last night I watched Molde slaughter Dundalk in the EL. Molde is hardly a brilliant team so why wouldn't you want Dundalk to play European teams closer to their quality instead? And then you got other Norwegian teams that can't even get to the EL (in theory they should then be worse than Dundalk - that is clearly not the case in reality).

So the EL is stuck in this funny place where not enough teams get in - and too many weak teams are in it. The gap between the best and the worst teams are just too big. This new setup seems to fix quite a lot of that I believe.

Molde and Dundalk will both be in the Conference League from now on, so it changes nothing regarding that situation.