Europa League Stadiums & Stats

The Europa League is, to all intents and purposes, Europe’s second-string competition after the Champions League.

That sounds better these days though since the creation of the third-string Europa Conference League that means the Europa League is no longer quite at the bottom of the pile.

It has a storied history, though, with the basis for the competition found in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup that was formed in 1955.

The idea was to form a tournament for European cities that held trade fairs on a regular basis, hence its name.

We’ll tell you more about the competition’s history as we go on, including how it went from the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup to the UEFA Cup before eventually becoming the Europa League that we know and watch today.

We’ll also tell you about the format of the competition, from qualifying right the way through to the final, and we’ll also let you know about other things such as club statistics, stadium details and more.

Europa League Stadiums

Final

Tournament Format

You can break the Europa League down into 3 sections: the qualification rounds and playoffs, the league, and the knockout stages.

Qualification and Playoffs

Qualification for the Europa League is a complicated affair, made even more convoluted by the fact there are now three European club competitions since the creation of the Europa Conference League.

There have been several restructures of the qualifying rounds, each one streamlining the process but also reducing the number of teams taking part.

From the 2024/25 season onwards, a total of 52 teams will go through the qualifying rounds, with the number of teams participating from each of UEFA’s 55 associations based on the coefficients awarded to the country by UEFA. Any association ranked 34 or lower will not see teams entered at all.

The coefficient ranks the collective performance of all clubs in each association, to give that association a score. It’s weighted for fairness to give all associations an equal chance, and enables UEFA to compare teams across many different leagues. This ensures more of the best teams throughout Europe enter the competition.

It’s a much tougher slog for teams in lower ranked associations, as they have to start right from the bottom.

The qualifying round structure for these teams is as follows:

• 1st Qualifying Round – 12 domestic cup winners from associations 22–33
• 2nd Qualifying Round – 5 domestic cup winners from association 16–21, 6 domestic league third-placed teams from associations 7–12, and 1 domestic league fourth-placed team from association 6
• 3rd Qualifying Round – 3 domestic cup winners from associations 13–15
• Play Off Round – 5 domestic cup winners from associations 8–12

From this point onwards the competition moves into a league format, which is where the biggest clubs enter the competition. I will explain this in the next section.

You might have noticed that the information above only amounts to 32 of the 52 teams in the qualifying round. That’s because, from the 3rd Qualifying Round onwards, the Europa League also accepts teams that have been knocked out of the Champions League and transferred across.

This is how they are filtered in:

• 3rd Qualifying Round – 12 losers from Champions League second qualifying round (Champions path), and 2 losers from Champions League second qualifying round (League path)
• Play Off Round – 6 losers from Champions League third qualifying round (Champions path)

Now we have our 52 teams. So each new stage of the competition is made up of new teams entering from domestic leagues in higher ranking associations, from the Champions League, or from teams who made it through the previous qualifying round.

This is how it works all together:

The 3rd Qualifying Round is actually split into two, with 12 ex-Champions League teams fighting for 6 places in the Playoffs, and 14 teams made up of 2 ex-Champions League teams, 3 new association teams entering the competition, and the 9 teams progressing from the 2nd Qualifying Round battling for 7 places in the Playoffs.

All fixtures at these stages in the competition are played across two legs, one at home and one away, and each tie is drawn at random. After both legs have been played, the winning team progresses to the next qualifying stage until they reach the League Stage.

The League Stage

One of the biggest ever changes in the history of the competition, was the introduction of the League Stage, first used in the 2024/25 season.

36 teams make up the league, split into 4 ‘pots’ by their UEFA coefficient  ranking. Each club will play 8 matches each, 4 at home and 4 away, and while their opponents will be decided at random, they will be made yup of two teams from each pot. The thinking here is that each team will get a similar balance of opponents.

The league is made up of:

• 12 teams from the qualifying rounds and playoffs
• 7 domestic cup winners from associations 1–7
• 5 domestic league fifth-placed teams from associations 1–5
• 1 team which won the Europa Conference League the previous year
• 5 losers from Champions League play-off round (Champions path)
• 4 losers from Champions League third qualifying round (League path)
• 2 losers from Champions League play-off round (League path)

At the end of the League Stage, the top 8 teams automatically go through to the knockout stages, while those from 9th to 24th place will enter a 2-leg playoff to decide who gets the final 8 knockout stage places. Which teams play each other in the playoffs will be decided by their final position in the table.

Obviously then, finishing lower than 24th means elimination from the competition.

This structure means that there will be 288 games played in the league, plus an additional 16 in the playoffs, for a total of 304 games all told.

The idea behind this format is that each game has some importance, whereas in the previous Group Stage format, many games didn’t have a lot riding on them. What’s more, taking into account the way coefficient rankings are decided, even if a team does not progress, it benefits them to do as well as possible, because it could mean extra places in Europe next season for the association they belong to. This would give them a higher chance of getting European football again in the future.

The Knockout Stages & The Final

This is where the Europa League gets really serious.

The Round of 16 the first step in the knockout stages, but clubs will be seeded rather than have their opponents drawn at random. For example, teams that qualified automatically will face teams that advanced via the playoffs. The 1st and 2nd placed teams from the league stage are placed on opposite sides of the bracket so that they cannot face each other unless they both reach the final.

All fixtures in the knockout stages are played over 2 legs apart from the final, which is a one-legged affair that is played at a neutral venue.

Eight teams from the Round of 16 make it through to the quarter-final stage, from which four teams will progress to the semi-final. After this, the remaining two teams qualify for the final of the competition, which must be decided on the night.

If necessary, the final game will go into extra-time and then a penalty shoot-out in order to determine the competition’s winner. The winner of the Europa League is rewarded not only with the trophy but also with a place in the Champions League group stages for the next season.

Previous Winners

The table below shows UEFA Cup / Europa League winners since 1998 when the final switched from two legged to a single game.

The table below shows all time winners that have won two or more trophies since the UEFA cup was founded in 1971

British Club Performance

Europa League Stats

About the Europa League

In The Beginning – Inter-Cities Fairs Cup

Ernst Thommen, from Switzerland, joined forces with Italy’s Ottorino Barrasi and England’s Sir Stanley Rous in order to create a tournament for sides from European cities that that held trade fairs on a regular basis.

The tournament was called the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and began on the 18th of April 1955. It involved teams from Barcelona, Birmingham, Basel, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Frankfurt, London, Leipzig, Milan and Zagreb.

The original tournament lasted for an incredible eight years, with matches tending to be scheduled to coincide with trade fairs. The first ever final was won by FC Barcelona, beating a team representing London by an aggregate score of 8-2.

For the second version of the tournament the organisers decided to go back to using real club’s rather than players representing cities. The only rule was that the clubs had to come from cities staging trade fairs.

The UEFA Cup

The 1971-1972 was the first one to be played under the new name of the UEFA Cup. The first final was an all-English affair, with Tottenham Hotspur beating Wolverhampton Wanderers. The name change came about because the competition was now organised by UEFA and no longer had to feature clubs from trade fair cities. For the majority of the 1970s the cup was won by teams from Northern Europe, with only Juventus winning it from the South in 1977.

Italian clubs did gain the upper hand during the 1990s, with Napoli’s win in 1989 beginning a succession of victories for teams from Italy. Over the following eleven seasons the UEFA Cup was won by a team from Italy on eight occasions. Inter Milan won it on three of those occasions, only having their domination interrupted by Galatasaray who became the first Turkish club to win it in 2000.

Other than in 1964 and 1965 the final of the UEFA Cup/Inter-Cities Fairs Cup had always been a two-legged affair. This changed in 1998 when Inter Milan beat Lazio 3-0 at the Parc des Princes in the first one-legged final of the competition.

The format changed further in the 1999-2000 season when domestic cup winners were also able to qualify for the competition after the disbandment of the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. This was also when teams dropped into the competition from Champions League for the first time.

From 1993 until 2004 the ‘Golden Goal’ could be used in any competition that the organisers saw fit to use it in.

In the 2001 final between Liverpool and Deportivo Alaves, played at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund, the Merseyside club became the first to win the competition through the Golden Goal rule. The rule stated that if a goal was scored during extra time then the match would end immediately, with the team scoring the goal winning the competition. Liverpool won it when Delfi Geli scored an own goal.

The Europa League

The competition became the Europa League ahead of the 2009-2010 season. The group stages of the tournament were expanded to allow 48 teams to take part, with each team playing six matches in the round-robin format that was also being used in the Champions League. Atletico Madrid lay down a marker for the newly branded tournament, winning two out of the first three titles.

The competition had its ranks swelled that season, too, with Europe’s third-tier competition, the Intertoto Cup, disbanded in order to merge it with the newly formed Europa League. The whole thing was done largely in an attempt to increase the profile of Europe’s second-string cup competition, with most people believing it was a poor relation to the more glamorous Champions League.

The first year under the new brand name was also the first year that the competition featured additional officials behind the goals. It was a change to the competition’s rules that meant a total of six officials would help to officiate the match. The main referee is helped by two assistant referees who run the line, a fourth official on the sideline and the two assistants who stand behind each goal and can alert the referee to anything he should be made aware of.

Sevilla

The greatest team of modern times in the Europa League has to be Sevilla.

Where other clubs see the Europa League as a potential consolation prize to a season, Sevilla take it very seriously indeed. This is reflected by the fact they have won the cup a record 7 times, and given their first trophy was only in 2006 that is an amazing feat.

The Spanish club won back-to-back in 2006 & 2007, then consecutively from 2014 to 2016 and again in 2020 and 2023.

Despite often being the underdog the club have found an unmatched winning mentality that has seen them win 7 out 7 finals under five different managers.

Now with the Europa League winners earning an automatic champions league spot you would expect them to be focused on the main European club competition, but even if they drop down to the EL for the knockout phase they become instant favourites to win it again.

The Trophy

The trophy awarded to the winner of the Europa League is known as either the UEFA Cup, the Coupe UEFA or, more correctly, the Bertoni Trophy. It weighs 15kg and is made of silver, with a yellow marble plinth. It gets its official name from the fact that it was both designed and crafted in the Bertoni workshops of Milan ahead of the final in 1972.

The design of the trophy is unique for a major European trophy in that it has no handles, with the real joy of the trophy lying in the simplicity of its look. Above the plinth is a group of players who appear to be jostling for the ball. In actual fact they are supporting the octagonal cup that stands above them, with the cup itself emblazoned with the UEFA emblem.

Before the rebranding of the competition in 2009 the winners were entitled to keep the original trophy for a year. After that they had to return it to UEFA and they could place a replica of it that was four-fifths the size in their trophy cabinet permanently. Any club that won the competition for three consecutive seasons or five times in total could ‘keep’ the trophy forever.

When the UEFA Cup became the Europa League, UEFA decided to alter the rules so that the trophy remains in their possession at all times. A full-scale replica is now awarded to the competition’s winner. Now any team that wins the trophy three times in a row or five times in total receives a ‘special mark of recognition’, rather than the right to keep the trophy permanently.

The Anthem

UEFA love a bit of theme music. The Champions League theme is known around the world and is enough to get anyone excited about what they’re about to watch.

The Europa League doesn’t quite have the same level of enjoyment, though if you say as much then UEFA will probably fine you.

The original anthem was composed by Yohann Zveig, with the Paris Opera recording it in early 2009. It was unveiled officially at the Grimaldi Forum on August the 28th 2009 before the draw for the group stage of that season’s competition.

A new anthem was launched for the 2015-2016 season and composed by Michael Kadelbach. It has to be played before every game in the competition and also during the opening sequence of any televised broadcast of one of the matches.