UEFA Europa League 2023/24

[The Lusophone]

11 minutes ago, Baddar said:

If Atalanta are 5th anyway and Serie A gets 5 spots, why does that part matter? Unless there's talk of granting a 6th spot.

This is what would happen. If Atalanta finish 5th they will get the UCL spot reserved for the winners of the UEL, with 6th place getting the UCL spot given to the two countries with the highest co-efficient in Europe the previous season. If Atalanta finish in the top four, Italy only gets 5 spots, and the UEL winner spot isn't used.

[Adam]

2 hours ago, Lineker said:

Tomato, tomato. They already won their first league title ever and qualified for the CL, which was the prize offered to the UEL winners. So obviously it's a shame and they'll be disappointed, but it's a decent silver lining!

I suppose this speaks to the philosophical point on what the point of football is. To me, it's to win trophies and titles - Leverkusen lost the chance at one last night. You don't watch football to aim for a 50 game unbeaten streak, nice as it is to achieve that, you want the trophy.

[Colly]

There's basically no way the thousands of Leverkusen fans walked out last night thinking "oh well, at least we qualified for the CL through league position". The prize offered to the EL winners is the EL trophy, with it's tremendous theme tune.

[Gazz]

Either way, you know Leverkusen are losing their first three league games next season.

[gunnar hendershow]

For any supporter under 40 they have no memory of the last time Leverkusen won a European trophy. It's gutting to lose that, with or without the undefeated season.

And I do know the "Neverkusen" label applied mostly to domestic success, and they overcame that. If I hedged a bet it would be going into this season any Leverkusen supporter would've said the trophy they want most is the Bundesliga. But any trophy lost out on, especially in the final, has to sting.

Happy for Atalanta by the way. Biggest night in the history of that club.

[Szumi]

I'm very interested to see how Leverkusen get on next year. Obviously they're going to lose more next year - I'd wager a minimum of 10 matches in all competitions tbh - and there will be Champions League and presumably a more determined Bayern Munich. Even if they keep their core together and strengthen, the big thing that sticks out to me is just how ridiculously good they were at 1 goal games, and scoring late winners/equalizers. We've pretty much seen almost every time that things like that are incredibly unsustainable, and regression to the mean is inevitable. If that happens, or even worse something towards the opposite happens, Leverkusen are going to be in for a very hard fall down to Earth.

[Lineker]