'Europa League 2': Uefa confirms new tournament from 2021
Last updated on .From the section European Football
A third European club competition with the working title 'Europa League 2' will be introduced from 2021.
One English team will enter the play-offs of the new tournament, while Scottish sides may miss out on Europa League places in a reshuffle.
As part of Uefa's 2021-2024 cycle, the Europa League will cut in size to 32 teams with an extra play-off round between the group stage and last 16.
The new tournament will be played on Thursdays alongside the Europa League.
Every country's champions will still enter the Champions League, but only teams from the 15 top-ranked countries will go into the Europa League group stages or qualifiers.
That means teams from leagues below that level - which at the moment would include Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, excluding their champions - would go straight into 'UEL2' qualifying rounds.
The new competition and Europa League will have the same format - eight groups of four teams with the winners going into the last 16. There will be a play-off before that round for the teams who finish second in the group and sides who finish third in the groups of the higher tournament.
The winners of the tournament will qualify for the following season's Europa League.
The Champions League format does not change.
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said: "The new competition makes Uefa's club competitions more inclusive than ever before. There will be more matches for more clubs, with more associations represented in the group stages.
"This competition was born out of ongoing dialogue with clubs through the European Club Association."
At least 34 countries will have teams in a group stage, compared to 26 at the moment.
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But a lot of smaller clubs, unable to join in the Europa League 1 with the richer nations, being forced to travel the length of Europe and beyond to play in front of 3 men and a dog? Nah.
I'm curious, do all the leagues and teams get a vote in these? Surely the vote has to be unanimous in order to proceed?
It's going to cost teams so much money in extra squad players, and the only winners are surely going to be Sky/BT/Amazon/Facebook/Netflix/whoever else joins in milking the cash cow of football.
Why do administrators of sports keep coming up with competitions that neither clubs or supporters once.
Oh yes, don't even get me started on taking the World's premier football competition to that 'hotbead' that is Bahrain.
I'm not sure it will work though because there's no promotion to aim for like the Nation's League has, you get a single year in the Europa League if you win and then it's back to where you started.
All for the benefit of big clubs who have an "off season" and miss out on the other tournaments.
Time to wrestle back control. When the 8th placed English or Spanish team are automatically qualifying ahead of other European league champions who have to negotiate 3 or 4 playoff rounds to qualify then something is seriously wrong.
there should be a cup winners cup competition where the main & less main cup winners of europe could enter & be in a fa cup style seeded 2 leg draw all the way to the final.
and there should be an old eufa cup or current europa league tournament for the minor placings of the leagues.