UEFA have officially unveiled the trophy and branding for the Europa Conference League, which begins next season.
And after their dramatic comeback victory against Leicester on the final day of the Premier League season, it’s Tottenham who will be representing England in the inaugural campaign.
It looked to all as if Arsenal were going to pip their great rivals to seventh place, cruising at home to Brighton while Tottenham were 2-1 down at Leicester, but a brilliant Gareth Bale double ensured they finished above the Gunners for the fifth straight season.
And importantly, it means they will be the first English team to play in UEFA’s new competition, which will sit below the existing Europa League and Champions League formats.
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But what exactly is it? Sportsmail explains everything you need to know about the new tournament.
So, in addition to the Champions League and Europa League, we now have a third European club competition – the Europa Conference League.
Essentially, the idea is that with another competition, more clubs will have the opportunity to play European football.
To use UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin’s words, ‘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.’
Well, in England anyway, that’s not wholly true. There is still a maximum of seven teams participating in European football, including the new format.
The real benefit will be felt by those in leagues where they struggle to qualify for the existing two competitions.
But how does it work? And when is Spurs’ first game?
Just like the Champions League and Europa League, there will be multiple qualifying rounds to play before the tournament gets underway.
In fact, there will be three – before a final two-legged play-off round.
Tottenham will go straight into the play-off round, which will be played on August 19 and 26, just five days after the 2021-22 Premier League season begins on August 14.
| Round | First Leg | Second Leg |
|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | July 8 | July 15 |
| Round 2 | July 22 | July 29 |
| Round 3 | August 5 | August 12 |
| Play-off round | August 19 | August 26 |
But who will make up the groups? Well, there will be eight groups of four, with teams earning a place via three distinct paths:
1) 17 teams will qualify via the main path, which is through the qualifying rounds shown in the table above.
2) Five teams will qualify via the champions path, which is made up of those who have lost Champions League qualifiers and are then demoted to the Europa Conference League.
3) 10 teams eliminated from the Europa League play-offs will also join.
The winners of each group will automatically go through to the round of 16.
In the meantime, there will be a knockout play-off round, contested by the eight group runners-up, as well as the eight teams who finish third in their Europa League groups.
From then, the tournament will follow a standard two-legged knockout format, until the one-off final on May 25.
Importantly, it’s now being ensured that 34 UEFA national associations get a minimum of one representative in the group stage of at least one competition.
And specifically for the Europa Conference League, England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany all get one team. Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Russia all get two.
