Badly Formatted

Nothing seems quite as frustratingly pointless as the newly rebranded 'Europa League'. First you have the fact that it takes seventeen games to win it, half a season. Then it's the fact that all the Champions' League teams go into it for free halfway through.

But besides that, it just seems so bizarrely misformatted. To summarise, it works like this:

76 teams play off over two legs so that 38 teams qualify for the group stage, in addition to ten losers from the Champions' League qualifying (do you know why losers from another tournament take precedence over teams that already qualified for this tournament? No, neither do I). These then play in twelve groups of four, with the top two going through in each. This does not make a round number for a tournament draw - this is because the eight third-place teams from the Champions' League drop in at this stage, to make up to thirty-two teams. From then on it is a straight knock-out to the final.

This is absurd, frankly. So many flaws and pandering to the Champions' League clubs. This is my version, put together in five minutes, and most of that doing the maths to put the numbers together correctly. I'd wager it works out to be a better tournament.

Expand the draw by ten teams. This way you start with 86 teams. Add to this the ten losers from the final Champions' League qualifiers, to avoid favouring them, to make 96. These 96 then play off in two legged ties to leave 48 teams for the main draw. Split these 48 teams into sixteen groups of three teams, each playing each other home and away, with the top team in each group going through to the round-of-sixteen (which is called the eigth-finals in some parts of the world).

From there, you have sixteen teams competing to reach the final in standard fashion. Third place in the Champions' League groups gets you a seat at home for the rest of the season, and not a shot at the Europa League as compensation. This format gives 13 games to reach the final - the exact same as the Champions' League, enabling a mirror tournament - and it removes the imbalance between Champions' League teams and genuine qualifiers.

Even within this I don't like the odd group stage, but considering the number of teams involved, it works better than a bigger group, and fits neatly enough to the current numbers.

Perhaps I should propose this to UEFA, see what the view is.