The UEFA Europa Conference League- Who qualifies and how does it work?
The UEFA Europa Conference League (UEFA Conference League for short) is the third season-long club competition from UEFA that is being introduced for European football clubs from the 2020/21 season.
It will work in the same group and knockout format that UEFA Champions League (UCL) and UEFA Europa League (UEL) work with. However, there are several changes to the mechanisms of qualification. We will get to that later.
Note: The source for this article is the UEFA website and the Access List provided by UEFA
The UEFA Europa Conference League (UECL) has been launched by UEFA in order to give more representation to clubs from countries whose national leagues are not as strong. It is their way of making UEFA club competitions more representative.
In the UCL and UEL, participating clubs were majorly from the biggest leagues in Europe. The UECL will see at least 34 UEFA national associations represented in the group stage of one or more UEFA club competitions. (h/t UEFA.com)
The motivation behind launching the Conference League was mentioned by UEFA President, Aleksandr Čeferin, who 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.”
The qualification process for the UECL is what stumps a lot of fans, and is probably the reason why you are on this page currently – to get a better understanding of it.
Firstly, no club will directly qualify for the UEFA Europa Conference League group stages, which will ultimately consist of 32 teams. This breaks away from the pattern in UCL and UEL where the majority of the teams qualify for the group stage straight away after finishing in the required league positions or winning their domestic cups.
For example, a team finishing 3rd in the Premier League makes the group stages of the UCL automatically. This will not be the case for UECL.
Hence, there will be a mandatory set of games before the group stage begins. These will be the First Qualifying Round, Second Qualifying Round, Third Qualifying Round and then, a Play-Off Round. As logic suggests with UEFA competitions, clubs from countries with stronger leagues are way more likely to be placed in the Third Qualifying Rounds and Play-Off Rounds.
Continuing from where we left off above, we now see how many clubs from each countries are allowed to enter the qualification procedure for the UECL. Keep in mind that even the strongest club from the strongest league, which is eligible to enter UECL, will not qualify directly for the group stage. They will have to go through a qualification procedure, as mentioned above, to make the group of 32 teams.
Now this is where things can get even more confusing. Like the UCL and UEL, there will be a champions path and a main path for qualification to the UECL group stages.
Champions path does not mean champions of their domestic leagues or cup competitions. It refers to the teams that were eliminated from the UEFA Champions League qualification procedure and have dropped down to the UECL. 10 such teams will make the cut.
The league path is self-explanatory and includes teams that will qualify for UECL qualification rounds by either finishing in a designated league position or winning their domestic cup. For example, the winner of this year’s Carabao Cup in England is awarded a place in the UECL qualification rounds.
Now, this is where we see how UEFA wants to make this competition more representative. They do this by making sure that 184 clubs from Europe get to have a shot at making the UECL group stages. The number of clubs from one specific country depends on that domestic league’s ranking in the UEFA coefficient.
The UEFA coefficient of leagues is the ranking of domestic leagues on the basis of how well their clubs have done in Europe over the last 5 seasons. The UECL will ensure that all of their 55 member nations (even San Marino and Lichtenstein, which has a knockout cup competition instead of a domestic league) have at least one club present in the qualification process for the UECL competition, thus making the competition truly representative.
We now look at how many teams are allowed from each UEFA associations. Below are the criteria for qualification.
The rankings here mean the UEFA coefficient ranking of a country’s domestic league. So rank 1-5 in the UEFA coefficient for leagues currently belongs to domestic leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. This means just one club from these countries’ top division will be allowed a chance to qualify for the UECL group stages.
Nations ranked 51 to 55 currently in the UEFA rankings are Wales, Iceland, Estonia, Andorra, and San Marino – which means that two clubs from each of these countries will make the qualifying round for the UECL. Naturally, clubs from San Marino or Andorra will have to play more qualifying games to make the UECL group stages than, say, a club from Spain or Belgium.
A handful of teams make the qualifying rounds for the UECL by losing in the UCL or UEL qualifying rounds. The other teams make that phase through the league path. They are then placed against each other and the winner from each round progresses until they win and make the UECL group stages.
So we now have 32 teams in the UECL neatly divided into 8 groups, with 4 teams each in one group. But this is where things get different from the old format. Winners of each of the 8 UECL groups make it into the last 16. That’s simple to understand. But teams that finish second in these groups do not make the last 16 straightaway.
They will have to face eight teams from the UEFA Europa League, who finished third in their respective groups, and dropped down to the UECL. The winner of these knockout games between the runner ups of UECL groups and third-placed teams from UEL will make the UECL last 16. The competition, from there on, follows the simple knockout procedure that we have come to understand all these years.
This means that UEL has changed too, with the biggest change being the reduction of UEL teams in group stages from 48 to 32. This is why many think that UECL is nothing but a secondary, beaten down version of the UEFA Europa League with a new name.
The total number of qualifiers from England, Spain, and Germany to the UEFA Conference League is 1. The winners of the domestic leagues in these countries (Carabao Cup for England) qualify for the UECL.
If the winners of the domestic leagues in these nations have already qualified for the UCL or UEL via league positions, then the UECL spot goes to the highest-placed team in the league table that hasn’t qualified for any European competition.
Let us take the example of England to undertand better. In England, two teams make the Europa League- one that wins the FA Cup, and one that finishes 5th in the league. This year, Leicester Cty won the FA Cup, so they are going to UEL.
But if they finish in the top 4 in the league, they will qualify for UCL, and their UEL spot will be passed down to the 6th placed team.
Now, the winner of the Carabao Cup in England is given the only spot from England in the UECL qualifying phases. But Manchester City won that cup, and are already in next season’s UCL via winning the Premier League. This means the UECL spot passes down from City to the next highest placed team in the table that hasn’t made any European competition – which is 7th.
As it turned out, Tottenham made the UECL after finishing 7th in the league while West Ham made the Europa League after a 6th-placed finish. As for Spain, they have no participants because the team that would have qualified for it via a league finish, Villarreal, won the Europa League and qualified for the UCL next term.
Rennes, Union Berlin, Pacos de Ferreira, and AS Roma make up the other top teams in the UECL play-offs.
The logo of the UEFA Europa Conference League, as seen multiple times in the article above, features the tournament’s trophy, surrounded by green semi-circular lines in a black background to give it a different look from the other two UEFA club competitions.
As for the final, the first final of the UEFA Europa Conference League takes place in Albania’s newly-launched National Arena in the capital city of Tirana. It will be held on 25th May 2022. The first qualification match for next season’s UECL starts as early as 8th July, which is the first qualifying round to be played between clubs from lower nations.
The winners, in simple terms, get automatic qualification into next season’s Europa League group stages. They will be one of the 32 teams in the group stages of the UEL and will not have to go through any qualification procedures.
The competitions, in their current format, are scheduled to run between 2021-2024, at least.
