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Europa League: Do we underrate it in England?

By Andy PymontPosted on Posted in UEFA Europa League

Last night Sevilla saw off AS Roma to win the 2023 UEFA Europa League title, edging out the Italians on penalties after a 1-1 draw.

With this victory, Sevilla have now won this competition seven times. Their first victory wasn’t until 2006, meaning it’s been a 17-year period where they’ve made the trophy their own.

The Most Successful Europa League teams

Sevilla were already clearly the most successful team in the competition’s history. Last night’s success simply extends their record:Europa League and UEFA Cup wins by team, 2023

The graph above shows all of the multiple-time winners; an additional 15 clubs have won the competition once each.

These totals include both UEFA Cup and Europa League wins. UEFA considers these to be the same competition.

At the time of writing UEFA does not count Inter-City Fairs Cup titles. However, many see this competition as a precursor to the UEFA Cup and therefore the Europa League. If those titles were included, then Barcelona (3 wins), Valencia and Leeds (2 wins each) would be the other multiple-time winners that would appear in the chart above.

Comparing Titles

Some will argue that Sevilla have won these titles in an easier era. It’s an understandable argument. The competition nowadays is not made up of the very best that Europe has to offer.

In the 70s and 80s, the UEFA Cup was a stronger competition because only league champions played in the European Cup. This means you could find many league runners-up playing in the UEFA Cup and face some very strong opponents. Clubs like Ipswich were and are rightly proud of winning the competition for many of these reasons.

The relative strength of the Champions League and especially the big focus on prize money from qualifying from it has distorted how fans think about the Europa League.

Yes, the competition was probably stronger in the 70s and 80s. However, there are also aspects that overlooked in this discussion. The Cup Winners’ Cup also existed at that time and was often viewed as the second competition. Teams from the Champions League also drop into the Europa League nowadays, which does keep the competition stronger than its detractors like to admit.

Back Door to the Top Table

In recent years, there has been a little more attention paid to the Europa League in English media: but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. Since 2014/15, UEFA have instated the rule that the competition’s winner will qualify for the following season’s Champions League. This has unfortunately become the focus in a lot of coverage.

I think focusing on this element of the competition is doing it a disservice. Viewing it just as a “back door” often turns it into a season-long slog to just try and get into another competition. When clubs have focused on this element – anecdotally at least – I think it’s tended to end in disappointment somewhere along the line.

Much better is to embrace being in the competition. It offers the same European adventure and nights under the floodlights as the Champions League. Winning multiple European knockout ties is usually a sign of a side’s quality.

The Europa League winner each year is usually a very good team. Often these teams embarrass so-called bigger English teams when they do meet – something we saw earlier this season when Sevilla claimed the scalp of Manchester United on their way to this seventh win.

English teams should embrace their chance in the Europa League and enjoy it for what it is: a chance to play proper European ties against proper teams. If you’re good enough – which is by no means guaranteed – then you’ll win a proper trophy at the end of it.

In 20 years’ time, nobody is going to remember that your club played in the Champions League group stage for a few seasons. If you win a trophy, however, then that will be in the history books forever.

The Conference League

In the past two seasons we’ve seen the Conference League added to the set of European competitions. No doubt there will be a temptation to again view this as a “lesser” competition. Like the Europa League, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see English teams under-perform, whilst our media says the competition isn’t important.

Next week West Ham will play Fiorentina in the Final of this competition and they do have a chance to change how we think about the “lesser” European trophies.

West Ham have had a difficult season in the league. Juggling European and domestic games can be difficult. This is especially the case when you don’t have one of the larger squads in the league. However, if West Ham manage to win a European trophy, that will be a huge moment for the club.

West Ham’s only previous European success came in the 1965 Cup Winners’ Cup. They’ve not won any trophy since the 1980 FA Cup. This is a huge opportunity for them to win something and it’ll be a great season if they do so. It will completely erase any disappointment with finishing 14th in the Premier League.

Middlesbrough: A Great What If?

Here’s one final interesting thing to consider about Sevilla’s achievement through an English football lens.

Sevilla’s first win came in 2006, when they faced Steve McClaren’s Middlesbrough. It proved to be one match too many for the Teessiders as they couldn’t produce one last big upset. They had stunned Roma, Basel, and Steaua Bucharest in an unlikely run but came up short on the night.

If we’d have had some more Massimo Maccarone heroics in the Final in 2006, could Middlesbrough have gone on to become the side that dominated this competition for 17 years? It seems unlikely, but partly that’s because we don’t tend to think about English teams winning the Europa League. And that’s often because we’re too focused on talking the competition down.

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