The Europa League is one of the biggest UEFA club football competitions and is second only to the Champions League in terms of prestige. Teams from England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Netherlands are among those who participate and the winner of each season’s Europa League lands an automatic qualifying berth to the UEFA Champions League the following season.
How Does the Europa League Work?
The Europa League usually starts in July and before the majority of domestic football campaigns have kicked off. There are several qualifying rounds before we get to the group stage and there are generally twelve groups of four teams, with each group having a seeding structure which means that the best teams are kept apart at this phase of the competition.
Once the group stage of the Europa League is complete, we then have twelve winners of the group and twelve runners-up and they go through to the knockout stage of the competition. In addition to these twenty-four teams, there are also eight teams from the Champions League that drop into this competition and they are the sides who finished third in their respective groups.
Now the thirty-two teams are drawn into a knockout stage and there are sixteen ties played on a home-and-away basis. We then have a last sixteen and last eight and last four stage which is played on a similar basis, with the away goals rule in force which means teams sometimes go through despite being level on aggregate.
Finally, we have the Europa League final where the two teams left standing compete at a neutral venue and the winner not only lands the Europa League trophy but they also qualify for the Champions League the following season. Sometimes they might have already qualified for this competition due to their standing in their domestic league.
Which Teams Have Won Recent Europa League Competitions?
There have been a real mixture of different teams winning the Europa League for one obvious reason. The leading teams in Europe generally compete in the Champions League which means that the teams at the business end of each Europa League tend to be third-placed sides from the Champions League groups along with the teams who are roughly fifth or sixth best in their respective domestic table.
Chelsea were the winners of the 2018-19 Europa League, beating Arsenal in an all-England final and the west London club were also successful in 2012-13 when beating Benfica at the Amsterdam Arena. However, the Blues have also been involved in the Champions League in recent years and managed to win this competition too.
Atletico Madrid are another Champions League regular who occasionally dip into the Europa League and they triumphed in the 2017-18 season when beating Marseille 3-0, while Diego Simeone’s side also overcame Athletic Bilbao by a similar scoreline in the 2012-13 final.
Manchester United were successful under Jose Mourinho in 2016-17, although the more remarkable achievement came in the preceding three years when Unai Emery steered Sevilla to three successive victories in the Europa League and that was before the winners of the competition automatically qualified for the Champions League.
What’s the Best Way to Bet on the Europa League?
The group stage of the Europa League is generally when betting customers start to get involved in the competition. There are an absolute heap of matches which generally take place on a Thursday night and you can choose from hundreds of pre-match and In-Play betting markets when it comes to every game.
We recommend that you use Odds1x2.com to compare the prices for each match so that you can bet in the confidence that you are securing the biggest odds about your selection, with customers often enjoying markets such as Full-Time Result, Both Teams to Score and Over/Under 2.5 Goals.
Many betting customers like to place a Europa League accumulator and this can apply to each round of group games along with the last 32 and last 16 stage where there are matches taking place simultaneously.