The Europa League is back, with three Portuguese representatives in the final stretch of the last edition before the reformulation, which will bring many changes. With the format that will come into force next season, in fact, Benfica and Sp. Braga would not be here, because there will no longer be teams from the Champions League at this stage.
This is one of the changes that will come into force in 2024/25, but there are many more. For Portugal, there are still changes regarding presence in each of the competitions, due to the drop to seventh place in the UEFA rankings. This means only five teams in the various competitions, compared to the current six. Only the national champion is present in the new group stage of the Champions League, while the second placed team enters the third qualifying round.
In the Europa League, the winner of the Portuguese Cup has direct entry, while the third-placed team in the championship enters the second qualifying round and therefore needs to pass three rounds to reach the group stage. Finally, the fourth placed team enters the second qualifying round of the Conference League. Furthermore, the possibility remains that fifth place in the championship gives access to the third European competition, if the winner of the Cup was first or second placed in the League.
More games, one League, a new phase and no repechages: what changes
In the reformulation that will come into force in 2024/25, the three European competitions will have similar models after the qualifying round. The number of participating teams increases and the group stage is replaced by a League format, with many more games – in the Champions League there are 50 percent more, from 125 to 189. In the Europa League it goes from the current 141 games to the same 189.
36 clubs now reach the main stage of each competition, compared to the current 32. The new model, in each of the competitions, directly qualifies the first eight for the round of 16. The 16 teams that place between ninth and 24th place will then compete in a new intermediate phase that will define the eight remaining clubs in the round of 16. It’s a two-legged play-off, with the top eight teams from the League stage seeded.
The last twelve teams in the League are eliminated, double what happened in the group stage of the Champions League that existed until this season. The playoff for the next competition is therefore over, as was the case until now.
The new format, designed by UEFA
In the Champions League and Europa League, each club will play eight games, compared to the current six. In the Conference League, this phase will have six games for each club.
The format of the new League that replaces the group stage is the so-called Swiss model, with eight games for each team against eight different opponents, four at home and four away. The draw will decide who will play against whom, from four pots based on the clubs’ coefficients over five years. In the Champions League, the first pot will no longer be reserved for the national champions. The possibility of facing clubs from the same country at this stage also becomes open.
The League phase starts at the end of September and runs until the end of January. There are ten weeks of games, because UEFA introduced an “exclusive week” for each of the competitions, with games from Tuesday to Thursday. The play-offs take place in February.
New format saves direct entry into the Europa League for Portugal
The new format, despite everything, means good news for Portugal in the Europa League. Until now, seventh place in the rankings did not guarantee a direct place in the group stage, but from next season it is guaranteed. There are also two possible places to access the competition, whereas until now there was only one. In addition, of course, to the possibility that the Portuguese team in the Champions League qualifying rounds will “fall” into the Europa League.
In the Champions League, the four additional places are awarded to another team from fifth place in the ranking, another team coming from the path of national champions in qualifying and two more from the two countries with the best collective performance in Europe in the previous season – currently they are England and Spain, with Portugal in seventh place.
In addition to this new possibility of sporting performance, which is unlikely to be within Portugal’s reach next season or in future seasons, the other possibility of having more teams in the Champions League is equally or more remote – winning the Champions League or the Europa League.
How Portugal lost weight in the Europa League
These are increasingly complicated goals for Portuguese teams. Not only the Champions League, where FC Porto is currently the only national representative, with a duel against Arsenal in the round of 16, but also the second European competition.
Sporting, Benfica and Sp. Braga are looking for something that hasn’t happened since FC Porto won the Europa League in 2020/11: three Portuguese teams in the round of 16. It was Portugal’s golden age in the competition, won by the Dragons in the final against Sp. Braga, who eliminated Benfica in the semi-final.
In the early years, after the UEFA Cup gave way to the Europa League in 2009/10, Portugal dominated the competition. In addition to FC Porto’s title in 2011, Sporting reached the semi-finals the following season and Benfica reached two consecutive finals, in 2013 and 2014, losing respectively to Chelsea and Seville.
But that changed, as the Europa League also became the almost exclusive domain of clubs from the big leagues in the later stages. Since 2014, no Portuguese team has even reached the semi-finals. And in this decade there have only been five national appearances in the quarter-finals: two for Sp. Braga, two for Sporting – the last of them last season – and one for Benfica.