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Europa League and Conference League draw: As they happened
By Ryan Dabbs,
6 hours ago
Just like the Champions League draw, it's all change for the Europa League this time around. Fortunately, we'll be on hand to guide you through the process.
The English representation comes in the form of last season's FA Cup winners Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, who finished fifth in the Premier League. Rangers are also in the Europa League - they managed to reach the third qualifying round of the Champions League, but lost 3-1 on aggregate to Dynamo Kiev and thus drop into UEFA's second-tier competition.
It promises to be like no draw we've ever had. This should be fun…
How to watch along
TNT Sports (Image credit: Getty Images)
Not to do ourselves out of a job, because we're sure if you're here for the draw it's because you either love FourFourTwo very deeply (and why wouldn't you) or because you have a reason you can't just watch along.
But if you're in the UK want to have it on in the background, it will be shown on the TNT Sports YouTube channel from 12pm BST.
Here are the pots for today:
Pot 1
Roma Manchester United Porto Ajax Rangers Eintracht Frankfurt Lazio Tottenham Hotspur Slavia Prague
Pot 2
Qarabag Galatasaray Viktoria Plzen Bodo/Glimt Union Saint-Gilloise Dynamo Kyiv Ludogorets Midtjylland Malmo
Pot 3
Real Sociedad AZ Alkmaar Braga Olympiacos Lyon PAOK Fenerbahce Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC Ferencvaros
Pot 4
Athletic Bilbao Hoffenheim Nice Anderlecht FC Twente Beşiktas FCSB FC RFS IF Elfsborg
English expectations?
Can United go all the way? (Image credit: Getty Images)
Manchester United and Tottenham will both enter the Europa League confident, perhaps even expecting, to go all the way to the final at Estadio de San Mames in Bilbao.
Indeed, with no teams dropping down from the Champions League (and no Sevilla in the Europa League) both United and Spurs are among the strongest sides in the competition. The Red Devils last won the Europa League in 2016/17, while Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou could see this as a great opportunity to land his first piece of silverware - and the club’s first since 2008.
How the draw works
UEFA seem to revel in making these things as laborious as possible, so while there's literally no reason they couldn't just generate all the fixtures and release them into the wild now it's all computer-generated anyway, we're going to get a very long, drawn out procedure today.
It works like this: they're going to draw out one team at a time using physical balls (leave it), announce who it is, and then show us the fixtures the computer has come up with.
We presume they are doing this 95% to create a sense of ceremony that we're supposed to be impressed by but in reality all just find achingly tedious, and 5% to assuage people who don't understand what 'random' means unless they see a load of balls being swirled around in a plexiglass bowl.
Each side will play two random sides from each pot, including their own pot, for a total of eight games. They will be a mix of home and away games, which will also be randomly determined.
The only element that isn't random is that nobody will be playing any sides from their own country, and nobody will be playing more than two sides from any one country.
How is qualification from the league phase determined?
All the results from all the league phase games will go into a fat 36-team league table.
At the end of it all, the top eight sides will go straight into the round of 16, while those who finish between 9th and 16th will be allocated two-legged play-off games against the sides who finish from 17th to 24th.
The winners of those play-off games will then join the teams who finished 1st-8th in the round of 16.
See? Simple.
And it's live!
Right, let's get into this. We're expecting some typical UEFA guff for a bit, but after that the draw will start.
As we saw in the Champions League draw yesterday, a team from Pot 1 will be drawn first, with the computer then generating their eight fixtures thereafter. Once all the Pot 1 teams have been drawn, the focus will then be on Pot 2 and so on.
Rangers are first out!
They will play:
Tottenham Hotspur (H) Manchester United (A) Lyon (H) Olympiacos (A) Union-Saint Gilloise (H) Malmo (A) FCSB (H) Nice (A)
Some great British games there!
Roma next
Frankfurt (H) Tottenham (A) Braga (H) AZ (A) Dynamo Kiev (H) Union SG (A) Athletic Bilbao (H) Elsborg (A)
Roma (H) Rangers (A) AZ (H) Ferencvaros (A) Qarabag (H) Galatasaray (A) Elfsborg (H) Hoffenheim (A)
Rangers:
Tottenham Hotspur (H) Manchester United (A) Lyon (H) Olympiacos (A) Union-Saint Gilloise (H) Malmo (A) FCSB (H) Nice (A)
Now, onto the Conference League
It’s not over yet! The Conference League draw will start soon, so keep tuned to our live updates. So go grab some lunch, you've got until 1.30pm BST until the draw starts.
British Isles representation
Chelsea are gunning for glory (Image credit: Getty Images)
For the first time ever, a team from England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland will be competing in the same European competition at the same time this season, with Chelsea, The New Saints, Hearts, Larne and Shamrock Rovers all in the Conference League.
Chelsea will be hoping to go furthest (and probably win it all) but there’s still a great opportunity for some upsets for the other sides.
The Conference League pots are as follows:
Pot 1
Chelsea Copenhagen Gent Fiorentina LASK Real Betis
Pot 2
Başakşehir Molde Legia Warszawa Heidenheim Djurgården APOEL
Pot 3
SK Rapid Omonoia Helsinki Vitória SC Astana Olimpija
Pot 4
Cercle Brugge Shamrock Rovers The New Saints Lugano Hearts Mladá Boleslav
Pot 5
Petrocub St. Gallen Panathinaikos TSC Borac Jagiellonia
Pot 6
Celje Larne Dinamo-Minsk Pafos Víkingur R. Noah
Cheers, UEFA
Because UEFA likes to be difficult, things have been made slightly more complicated for the Conference League. Instead of four pots of nine teams, the Conference League draw actually has six pots of six teams.
That’s because there will only be six matchdays for the competition, rather than eight like in the Champions League and Europa League. That means picking up points in the league system is even more important, with things expected to be a lot tighter for automatic qualification to the knockout rounds.
And we're back. It's time for the Conference League draw
You'll notice that it's no longer called the 'Europa Conference League' anymore, as an aside. Just the Conference League - so at least UEFA has learned how to simplify something .
Right, we're underway. And Gent are the first side drawn
The clear standout tie of the Conference League, however, has to be Larne vs Shamrock Rovers, with the Northern Irish side hosting the Republic of Ireland team.
Thanks for joining us for the Europa League and Conference League draws!
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