How new Europa League rules affect Leicester City
By Akash Roy
UEFA committee has voted in favor of implementing huge changes that are going to reshape the annual tournament. What does this mean for Leicester City fans?
As UEFA will be introducing three different tournaments from this year onwards, there are significant changes to be made in the middle one. It will be UEFA Europa League‘s 51st season, the 13th since it was rebranded from UEFA Cup.
The big changes this year
The introduction of the Europa Conference League means several changes are to be made in the upper hierarchy, which is the Europa League.
- The group stage will be reduced from 48 to 32 teams – eight groups of four. The eight group winners progress automatically to the round of 16.
- There will be additional knockout round play-offs prior to the round of 16; these will be between the eight UEFA Europa League group runners-up and the eight third-ranked teams of the UEFA Champions League groups.
- Matches will continue to be played on Thursday (other than the final), alongside UEFA Europa Conference League games. The matches of the two competitions will in principle be equally split between the two-time slots: 18:45 CET (no longer 18:55) and 21:00 CET.
via uefa.com
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What does this mean for Leicester City?
This time around, the Europa League will be systematically structured a lot like the Champions League. The redundancy in the extra knockout rounds has been exempted. However, the challenge remains if a team fails to win their respective groups. The reason for that is the runners-up from each group would have to go through an extra play-off which is going to be quite a task as their opponents would be the eight third-ranked teams who get eliminated from the Champions League groups.
So the uttermost importance for Leicester City would be to give it their best shot in every match on the group stage. It could help us to jump directly into the round of 16 more safely. Another noteworthy change that might introduce itself is that the UEFA’s Club Competitions Committee has voted to scrap the away goals rule in a move that may drastically alter knock-out European fixtures.
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The final verdict will be made public after a meeting on Friday where the Executive Committee will decide whether to sanction the change. The controversial feature has been present since 1965, which had made each leg of the competition nerve-wracking interesting. The rule stipulates that if the two teams are level on aggregate even after two legs, the side with more away goals will progress.