The Europa League, Why Bother?

On Thursday night Liverpool FC welcomes FC Sion of Switzerland to Anfield. A team who qualified for the competition having won their domestic cup competition in a season in which they finished 7^th in a 10 team league. Following our draw against Bordeaux in our opening fixture Liverpool will be hoping for a straightforward win against the Swiss minnows before our game against what should be slightly tougher opponents Rubin Kazan next time out.

Having just named all of the teams in our group it’s clear to see why a lot of people feel the Europa League has lost even the small amount of lustre that remained in its previous incarnation as the UEFA Cup. Certainly in these early stages the romance is all but gone. The long distances for some away games to face a side you may not have heard of before is not exactly the stuff of dreams for players or fans alike. And with clubs becoming more and more obsessed with money, although its justified, the relatively meagre financial rewards of the lesser European competition hold little appeal.

People make a lot of claims to support the idea of the Europa League as being nothing but a burden but a lot of these claims are questionable. The old chesnut of there being too many games in the competition is simply incorrect.  In reality you only have to play 2 extra games to go all the way in the Europa League compared to the Champions League. Of course if you qualify for the Champions League by finishing 4^th you have to go through a 2-legged qualifier, so that makes it exactly the same amount of games. The other claim that always baffled me is that it’s somehow harder to compete in the domestic league if you are in the Europa. Maybe this is true versus a team with no European football who have those extra midweek rests (like we did in 13/14) but compared against teams in the Champions League I can see no clear advantage. Quite why playing Thursday & Sunday is supposed to be a huge amount harder than playing Wednesday & Saturday is utterly beyond me.  Its not that so many games should be easy, but why not let this competition serve to prepare us for when we return to where we want to be. The competition itself does not offer incredible financial reward, of that there is no doubt.  Neither the prize money, nor TV money on offer is even comparable to that of its big brother, but for me, to focus on that is to completely miss out on the potential long term benefits. I hope the hierarchy at the club have recognised that this competition has many aspects which although they might not make it a priority, certainly make it worthy of serious participation.

Right now, we have a very young and very inexperienced squad. We also have a very young and inexperienced manager. The experience we could pick up in this competition would be absolutely invaluable to all at the club. You only need to look back to how the players who won Old Big Ears in Istanbul credited the experience they had gained when winning this competition in 2001 as playing a vital supporting role. There are also many managers who used their experience in this competition to springboard them onto greater success, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho to name but two. Even our owners have no experience of the joy a run in Europe can bring.

I want to be absolutely clear, this is not me calling for our manager to go all in at the expense of our league form. His quotes yesterday with regard to protecting Daniel Sturridge and leaving him out of the squad are entirely agreeable to me. I think that’s the beauty of this competition, in these early stages there is no reason why, with some good tactical work from our manager, we cannot select what would be recognised as a “weakened team” and still hold a realistic chance of progressing.  All the while the squad, and manager, are picking up experience.  If we do progress through the group stage we will be joined after Christmas by the teams who finished 3^rd in their Champions’ League group and at this point the standard of the competition rises. Hopefully at the point we will have a more realistic idea of how our league season is panning out. I would argue that if at that point it seems our chances of achieving top 4 seem unlikely, it may even be worth moving this competition up the priorities list. Let’s not forget that the Europa League now offers the coveted Automatic Champions League place to the winner. At this stage of the competition there are 32 teams remaining so depending on the opposition we could start to enter stronger teams dependent on the opposition.  

In a less tangible sense I would like to see some European pride restored to the team. Liverpool in Europe has always been a romance. From the incredible nights under the floodlights at Anfield to the many legendary players who have reminisced about the beauty of hearing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Our last forays in Europe have been nothing short of depressing. I would like to see us make an impact once more. Of course I would rather that be in the Champions League but that is not on offer at the moment. It will be hard to qualify for the Champions League even next year, so why should we close one possible route without giving it a good shot?