The European Super League will have to wait after its failure, but where the ball will roll is in the Conference League. This Tuesday, July 6, the preliminary phase of a tournament created by UEFA will begin and which complements the two major European competitions: the Champions League and the Europa League.
Is about a third way to play in Europe and that it gives the opportunity to more clubs to compete with each other on the continent, that is, it allows less powerful entities, which, in their case, the Super League did not contemplate. This will be the first season of the Conference League.
What is the Conference League?
It was in 2018 when UEFA gave the green light to the Conference League, the third competition in Europe that is behind the Champions League and the Europa League. It is a tournament that gives more options to play in Europe and that will be played for at least the next three seasons.
The first edition of the Conference League will be the one corresponding to the 2021-22 season and it is already known that the final will be at the National Arena in Tirana Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
“The new UEFA club competition makes UEFA club competitions more inclusive than ever,” Aleksander Ceferin said of this Conference League.
How the competition works
The group stage will consist of 32 teams. Ten of them will qualify after having been eliminated in the Europa League ‘play offs’, while the rest will have to go through qualifying rounds against the teams classified for the tournament from the other countries. “There will be more games for more clubs, with more associations represented in the group stage,” explained the UEFA president.
There will be four rounds before the group stage, which is known as the Conference League run-up stage. In the last one, the Spanish team that was in seventh position would enter, but it will not be like that because Villarreal won the Europa League, so there will be no team from Spain in this edition.
The group stage will begin in September, the eighth will be in March, the fourth will take place in April and between the end of April and the beginning of May the final will be defined, which will be on the 25th.
Which teams play the Conference League
Counting all the phases in total, there are 184 teams who are going to participate in the Conference League. That is, there will be at least one of the 55 federations that are linked to UEFA. None will be classified directly, but they will have to pass the previous qualifying rounds to be able to be in the group stage.
Match schedule and times
The group stage will begin in September, the eighth will be in March, the fourth will take place in April and between the end of April and the beginning of May the final will be defined, which will be on the 25th.
Regarding the schedule, the games will be played on a schedule similar to the Europa League. They will be on Thursdays and may start at 6:45 p.m. or 9:00 p.m.
–
