EUROPA LEAGUE: GUIDE

Sunderland will play in Europe for the first time in 53 years next season. The Europa League isn’t a prospect many were expecting, even at the start of last week and especially not at the start of the season. The competition itself is not that complicated once you know how it all works, although UEFA have done their best to make it much more confusing (albeit with a trade-off of making it a lot more interesting to watch, I’d argue). We are no experts, having never been in this position before, but here's everything we know about the competition so far. There are a few things you might want to know before we play our first match in September...

WHEN ARE THE GAMES?

Unlike a lot of domestic competitions, we already know exactly when each one of our eight league stage matches will be, aside from the opening game which can be on one of two dates.

MATCHDAY 1: 16/17 SEPTEMBER

MATCHDAY 2: 15 OCTOBER

MATCHDAY 3: 22 OCTOBER

MATCHDAY 4: 5 NOVEMBER

MATCHDAY 5: 26 NOVEMBER

MATCHDAY 6: 10 NOVEMBER

MATCHDAY 7: 21 JANUARY

MATCHAY 8: 28 JANUARY

WHEN DO WE FIND OUT WHO WE PLAY?

This is the biggest thing to look forward to as well as the most important logistically if you’re actually planning on travelling to any of our four away matches. The draw date is 28th August, one day after the play-off round confirms the final teams to qualify for the Europa League. At the moment, beyond speculation and a million permutations, we have no idea who we will get. The only exception is we can’t draw English teams in the league stage, so no Bournemouth or, possibly, Crystal Palace.

HOW DOES THE DRAW WORK?

The 36 teams will be divided into four pots of nine, based on their coefficients in Europe. You then draw two teams from each pot, including your own. As mentioned, you can’t get teams from your own country and you also can’t get a team from the same country more than twice. So we could get Real Sociedad and Celta Vigo for instance but we couldn’t then get Rayo Vallecano (if they qualify by beating Palace in the final of the Conference League), or a combination thereof.

After our eight opponents are pencilled in, we then learn which ones we are playing at home or away. You cannot draw a team at home and away, there are no return legs in the league stage. For example, if we draw Marseille we’ll either play them at the Stadium of Light or in France, not both. UEFA’s algorithm tries to factor in logistics and a fair balance of home and away fixtures. Long story short though, we play four home matches and four away matches.

WHAT POT WILL WE BE IN?

Pot 3 or 4 most likely.

WHAT WILL THE ALLOCATIONS BE LIKE?

Unfortunately, UEFA rules mandate clubs only have to give 5% of their stadium to away supporters. However, it is worth noting that a club must have a stadium of at least 8,000 capacity to play at their own ground in the Europa League, or they have to play somewhere else. That means the minimum allocation will be no less than 400 no matter what. We’ll have to give away teams an allocation of somewhere between 2,300 and 2,450, depending on if they use the workable capacity of the stadium or the paper capacity of 49,000.

HOW DO THE KNOCKOUT STAGES WORK?

Not to get too far ahead, so I’ll keep this brief. The top eight after the league stage advance straight to the round of 16. Teams ranked ninth to 24th will play in a knockout play-off to join them. Ninth to 16th are seeded in the draw, which means they get to play the second leg of the tie, against the teams 17th to 24th, at home. All knockout ties are over two legs, except the final which is just a single game at a neutral venue. The Waldstadion in Frankfurt will host the final.

“In the draw for the round of 16, the eight teams finishing the league phase in positions 1–8 are seeded, and the eight winners of the knockout phase play-offs are unseeded. In the quarter finals and semi finals, both the exact match pairings and order of legs are predetermined based on the tournament bracket. The teams with the better league phase ranking play the second leg of each round at home if they continue advancing. Should a seeded team be beaten, the team that eliminated them takes over their seeding position. The winner of semi final 1 is designated as the "home" team for the final.”- from Wikipedia (don’t shoot the messenger).

The dates for the knockout stages (if you dare to think about them) are as follows:

KNOCKOUT ROUND PLAY-OFFS (DRAW ON 29TH JANUARY):

FEBRUARY 18 AND 25

ROUND OF 16 (DRAW ON 26TH FEBRUARY, ALONGSIDE DRAW FOR REMAINING ROUNDS):

MARCH 11 AND 18

QUARTER FINAL:

APRIL 8 AND 15

SEMI FINAL:

APRIL 29 AND MAY 6

FINAL:

MAY 26

ANYTHING ELSE?

Yes, Russian clubs remain banned and Belarusian clubs aren’t banned but aren’t allowed to play in Belarus. Due to ongoing conflicts, Ukrainian and Israeli teams cannot play in their respective countries, so their ‘home’ games are played elsewhere. It is also worth clarifying that Champions League teams cannot drop down into the Europa League, except in the qualifiers. Similarly, Europa League teams can only drop into the UEFA Conference League if they're knocked out in the qualifiers. We don't have to play any qualifiers, therefore the Conference League is not possible for us. Finally, the orders and pairs for the round of 16 are pre-determined.