Europa League – Previously called UEFA CUP

Europa League is the brand new name for the old UEFA CUP competition. The rebranding process started in 2009-2010 season and a lot of elements have been improved, starting from the money prizes increasement.

UEFA wanted to attract bigger clubs and make this competition much more popular than it is right now, approaching it to the best european and highest football value competition known as “UEFA Champions League”.

A little history overview : UEFA Cup started in the 1971-72 season, with a final of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur, with Spurs taking the first Trophy ever called like that.

The football team which are the cup winners after a long season keep the trophy for an entire year and according to the regulations they must be returning it to UEFA. However, the club is allowed to keep a four-fifths scale replica of the original trophy.

Now that we told about the 1st winner, let’s “reveal” the last UEFA Cup edition’s winner which is Shaktar Donetsk with the romanian manager Mircea Lucescu.

Getting into present, the current & first winner of the new Europa League is Atletico Madrid spanish club which played in final stage against Fulham FC the big english surprizing club.

The current 2010-2011 UEFA Europa League season final will be played in The Republic of Ireland on Wednesday 18 May 2011. This is first time when Dublin Arena was selected as the place of final play for this european competition.

According to the UEFA Coefficients the following countries will send the most teams : England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France. Each one from the list will have a number of 3 teams directly into groups.

The Format of Europa league :

The group stage was expanded and now includes 12 groups, each containing a number of 4 teams. Each footabll club will play the other 3 ones at home and away.

The first two top placed teams on their groups will go ahead to the round of 32.

Other 10 teams eliminated from the UEFA Champions League play-off automatically go for the Europa League’s group stage.

The final will take place on a neutral stadium on a Wednesday, 20.45 Central European Time.

As of the competition’s ball, same as 2009-2010 season, the 2010/11 one it’s still provided by Adidas. Having the ‘grip’n’groove’ tech, ball design has the UEFA Europa League logo and the brand colours.

15kg, 65cm high, 33cm wide and 23cm deep this is the heaviest of all UEFA silverware Trophy.

The Anthem is recorded by the orchestra of the Paris Opera and is composed by Frenchman Yohann Zveig. To be mentioned that it has no lyrics.

As for the tickets lets mention that UEFA is not selling any tickets excepting for the final. The two finalist clubs will be able to sell tickets to their own fans by the end of February. Interested people will be able to get a ticket for the final stage online via UEFA.com

The 2012 UEFA Europa League final will be staged at Bucharest’s National Stadium, Romania. It will be first time of a final to be played here and the constructors are working hard as it is under construction at the moment.

Author Bio: Alex Crivion – europa league

Category: Sports
Keywords: soccer, football, europa league