2015-16 NIT: the Europa League thread

Dec 21, 2015
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As #4 in La Liga, Villarreal doesn't go straight to UCL group stage, they have to play in the Playoff round first. Sevilla does go straight to group stage as Europa winners. So, 4.

With both Copa del Rey finalists already qualified for the UCL, and this year's UCL finalists qualifying for next year's UCL through their domestic league finish, my understanding is that Malaga is now qualified for the Europa 3rd qualifying round.
 

SoxFanInCali

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I'm curious if Malaga still gets that birth if Sevilla beat Barcelona this weekend. From reading about the Liverpool possibilities last week, it seemed like England would lose a Europa spot if Liverpool qualified for it but then got Champions League through winning the Europa. If Barca wins and Sevilla would not have qualified for anything in Europe, their CL spot is an additional spot for the league, but if Sevilla wins and rightly qualified for Europa, their extra CL place may come at the expense of that EL place.

Since it's a different league, I'm not sure of any of this, but that was my understanding about what would have happened if Liverpool finished 7th, the Mancs win the FA Cup, and Liverpool would have won Europa.
 

Zososoxfan

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Very helpful! Malaga went from no Europe money, to receiving at least €220,000 and the potential to win more with positive results. I wonder if the player contracts are clever enough to tie bonus payments to league placement (e.g. finish 5-7 in the table) as opposed to qualification (i.e. qualify for EL/UCL). Sevilla gets the real bump though (deservedly, they just won a cup), going from €220,000 (I'm assuming that 1) Sevilla as the last qualifier from Spain gets into the 3rd qualifying stage, like Malaga and 2) that they don't beat Barca in the CDR) to €12,000,000(!) for a UCL Group Stage qualification with 6 opportunities to improve on that (prize money awarded for draws, wins, and progression to knockouts), not to mention the €3,000,000 discrepancy for winning/losing the EL final.

Edit: Nevermind, pasting gifs is too hard.
 
Last edited:
Dec 21, 2015
1,410
I'm curious if Malaga still gets that birth if Sevilla beat Barcelona this weekend. From reading about the Liverpool possibilities last week, it seemed like England would lose a Europa spot if Liverpool qualified for it but then got Champions League through winning the Europa. If Barca wins and Sevilla would not have qualified for anything in Europe, their CL spot is an additional spot for the league, but if Sevilla wins and rightly qualified for Europa, their extra CL place may come at the expense of that EL place.

Since it's a different league, I'm not sure of any of this, but that was my understanding about what would have happened if Liverpool finished 7th, the Mancs win the FA Cup, and Liverpool would have won Europa.
I'm seeing conflicting sources on this. Wikipedia's Europa league article for next season agrees with your analysis, and says:

"Since the winners of the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League (which automatically qualified for the 2016–17 UEFA Champions League), Sevilla, also qualified for the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League as the seventh-placed team of the 2015–16 La Liga, their berth in the Europa League is vacated and not replaced by any other team."

However, the previous year's Europa League article says:

"Should the domestic cup winners qualify for the Champions League, the cup runners-up will no longer be granted a spot in the Europa League, and the spot will be given to the highest-placed team in the league which have not yet qualified for European competitions."

But I think that situation (domestic cup winner already qualified) is superseded by Sevilla's winning of the EL, because it notes Sevilla's own situation this past year:

"Since the winners of the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League (which automatically qualified for the 2015–16 UEFA Champions League), Sevilla, also qualified for the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League as the fifth-placed team of the 2014–15 La Liga, their berth in the Europa League is vacated and not replaced by any other team."

So yeah, I'll retract my statement and say it looks like Malaga is SOL.
 

SoxFanInCali

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Yeah, my understanding was that the 5th CL spot given to the EL winner would not bump anyone that qualified for Europe out (it could potentially knock a CL qualifier into the EL but not out of Europe entirely), but wouldn't allow a team that otherwise wouldn't have qualified (like Malaga) to enter. The only way for England to get 8 spots between the 2 tournaments would have been for Liverpool to win today but miss out on either CL or EL qualification through the league (as they did by finishing 8th). In that case England would receive an extra spot and the 7 other qualifying teams wouldn't be affected. But if Liverpool had finished 6th and won today, the same 7 teams would have gone to Europe, it would have just been 5 CL/2 EL rather than 4/3.