European Football body, UEFA, is ready to kick off its third club competition — the UEFA Europa Conference League — next season.
The UECL is a third-tier competition in European club football, ranked below the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League, and will run alongside these two competitions.
The UECL aims to give more clubs a chance at European football, specifically clubs from countries that struggle to qualify for either the Champions League or the Europa League.
As UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin said, “The new UEFA club 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.”
Below are some important details to be known about the novel UEFA competition.
• 184 teams will be involved over the course of the season including at least one from each of the 55 associations and 46 clubs transferring from either the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League.
• The Europa Conference League is set to have three qualifying rounds followed up with a play-off Round before the group stage. Teams that top the group stage will qualify for the Round of 16 games with the knockout rounds to follow.
• From the Premier League, the winner of the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup gets the chance to feature in the Conference League. However, with Manchester City winning the League and Leicester City also set for a top-six finish, the seventh-ranked team on the Premier League table is set to qualify for the tournament.
• Just like the Premier League, Barça, Juventus, and Dortmund have won their respective domestic cups and are also set for a top-six finish leaving the seventh-ranked team from their leagues a chance to feature in the tournament. With PSG also winning the Coupe de France final the 6th ranked team in Ligue 1 is set to play in the maiden edition of the Europa Conference League.
• Teams that have already qualified include Vitesse, Basel, AEK Athens, Rubin Kazan, BATE Borisov and Rosenborg.
• Europa Conference League fixtures will take place on Thursdays.
• The first final match will be played at the Arena Kombëtare in Tirana, Albania, on May 25, 2022.
• The winner will win a spot in the following season’s UEFA Europa League group stage if they have not qualified for the UEFA Champions League through their domestic competition.
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