Uefa’s Europa Conference League Likely Only to Keep Big Fish Happy

The Europa Conference League will serve as a third-tier Uefa club competition and give more clubs in more countries a chance to participate in Europe. (EPA)
The Europa Conference League will serve as a third-tier Uefa club competition and give more clubs in more countries a chance to participate in Europe. (EPA)
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Uefa’s Europa Conference League Likely Only to Keep Big Fish Happy

The Europa Conference League will serve as a third-tier Uefa club competition and give more clubs in more countries a chance to participate in Europe. (EPA)
The Europa Conference League will serve as a third-tier Uefa club competition and give more clubs in more countries a chance to participate in Europe. (EPA)

Caving in to apparently nonexistent demands for a competition football fans were unaware they needed, European football’s governing body has announced a new wheeze due to kick off in 2021. The Europa Conference League will serve as a third-tier Uefa club competition and give more clubs in more countries a chance to participate in Europe.

At least that was the party line when the tournament was unveiled by Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, at the organization's executive committee meeting in Ljubljana last week, although cynics might be excused for thinking it is little more than a sop to keep European football’s also-rans happy while ensuring the wealthiest clubs continue to qualify for the Champions League.

Confirmed last December and ratified last week, the Europa Conference League will sit below the Champions League and Europa League in the hierarchy and will comprise 32 teams split into eight groups of four. Group winners will progress to the last 16, and an additional knockout round will be played before the last 16 between the second-placed teams and eight teams who drop from the Europa League. The winners of the Europa Conference League will enter the following season’s Europa League. Matches will be played on Thursday with kick-offs at 5.45pm and 8pm UK time.

It will be left to national associations to decide the criteria for earning a place, with England, Spain, France, Italy and Germany getting one each. England’s will go to the winners of next season’s Carabao Cup, but if that team end up qualifying for Europe by other means, as Manchester City did last season, the recipients of the Europa Conference League will be determined by league position.

In a move that could have serious ramifications for Scottish clubs, Uefa has announced that the Europa League group stages are being reduced from 48 teams to 32 from 2021. From that point, only nations ranked 15th or higher in Uefa’s coefficient table will be granted access to the Europa League. The league winners of countries with a lesser ranking will still enter Champions League qualifying but seem likely to go into the Europa Conference League should they fail to make the group stages. It should be stressed that the finer details regarding qualification have yet to be decided.

The Scottish Premiership winners currently enter the Champions League qualifying rounds, while the teams that finish second, third and fourth compete in Europa League qualifying. Scotland are 19th in Uefa’s coefficients, meaning all but the champions would automatically go into the new competition and presumably suffer financial consequences. Should Scotland improve their ranking to 15th place or higher, they could have as many as five representatives in Europe: two in Champions League qualifying and three elsewhere.

In England much has been made of the Premier League travails being endured by Wolves. Despite Nuno Espírito Santo’s pre-season assurances that his squad would be well equipped to maintain the league form that earned them qualification for this season’s Europa League, all available evidence suggests escapades on the continent are having a predictably adverse effect on results at home.

In recent years teams from outside the Premier League’s Big Six have suffered on the domestic front after clambering aboard the Thursday-Sunday Europa League treadmill. Between them, Burnley (14), Everton (12), Southampton (17) and West Ham (17) acquired 60 points fewer in the seasons immediately following European qualification. It does not take a genius to figure out why.

Qualifying for Europe’s second-tier competition tends to hamstring any chance such clubs have of kicking on and qualifying for its main one. It is, one suspects, a state of affairs Uefa and those clubs at the top of the Premier League hierarchy find entirely agreeable in their insatiable quest for wealth.

Wolves fans should enjoy their foray into Europe but are entitled to view it as the distraction that will end any chance of gatecrashing the Premier League’s top-four party in a season when the places of Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea seem under threat. The Europa Conference League will further jeopardize any small chance that ambitious middle-ranking top-flight teams from Europe’s major leagues have of getting into Uefa’s blue-riband event.

Although this new competition will ensure more clubs than ever get to muddy their spats in European competition, it seems abundantly clear it will tighten the stranglehold of those rich grandees from the English, Spanish, French, Italian and German leagues who consider their place among the continental elite not so much a privilege as a divine and inalienable right.

The Guardian Sport



Djokovic Says Tennis Players Have a ‘Lack of Trust’ in Doping Agencies After Sinner Case 

Novak Djokovic of Serbia attends a press conference ahead of the Qatar Open tennis tournament in Doha, Qatar, 17 February 2025. (EPA)
Novak Djokovic of Serbia attends a press conference ahead of the Qatar Open tennis tournament in Doha, Qatar, 17 February 2025. (EPA)
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Djokovic Says Tennis Players Have a ‘Lack of Trust’ in Doping Agencies After Sinner Case 

Novak Djokovic of Serbia attends a press conference ahead of the Qatar Open tennis tournament in Doha, Qatar, 17 February 2025. (EPA)
Novak Djokovic of Serbia attends a press conference ahead of the Qatar Open tennis tournament in Doha, Qatar, 17 February 2025. (EPA)

Novak Djokovic says a majority of tennis players have lost faith in the anti-doping authorities following Jannik Sinner's three-month ban, and there's a widespread feeling that “favoritism” is being shown to the sport's biggest stars.

The 24-time major winner called on the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Tennis Integrity Agency to overhaul their processes for dealing with doping cases “because the system and the structure obviously doesn't work.”

“Right now there is a lack of trust generally from the tennis players, both male and female, toward WADA and ITIA and the whole process,” Djokovic said at the Qatar Open.

Top-ranked Sinner reached a deal with WADA on Saturday to accept a ban that will have him back playing in time for the French Open in May without having to miss a single Grand Slam tournament. That came after the International Tennis Integrity Agency had decided not to suspend Sinner for what it judged was accidental contamination by a banned anabolic steroid last March.

The short ban for Sinner came after five-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension in November after testing positive for a banned substance that she said was accidentally consumed because of a contaminated nonprescription medication. Both bans are much shorter than what other athletes in tennis and in other sports have normally received in similar cases.

“It’s not a good image for our sport, that’s for sure,” Djokovic, the long-time No. 1 in men's tennis, said. “There’s a majority of the players that I’ve talked to in the locker room, not just in the last few days, but also last few months, that are not happy with the way this whole process (for Sinner) has been handled.

“A majority of the players don’t feel that it’s fair. A majority of the players feel like there is favoritism happening. It appears that you can almost affect the outcome if you are a top player, if you have access to the top lawyers and whatnot.”

Sinner had been scheduled to play in Qatar before accepting the ban.

The handling of Sinner’s case had already raised questions about double standards, and when the ban was announced it was widely criticized by other players. The positive tests weren’t publicly revealed until August because Sinner successfully appealed against being provisionally banned from playing. He then won the US Open in September and the Australian Open in January.

Sinner’s explanation for the positive test was that trace amounts of Clostebol in his doping sample was due to a massage from a trainer who used the substance after cutting his own finger, which WADA accepted.

Djokovic said he didn't question Sinner's and Swiatek's innocence but that he and other players are frustrated about the inconsistent handling of doping cases.

He pointed to the case of former women's No. 1 Simona Halep — who was given a four-year ban by the ITIA in 2022 after a positive test before it was later reduced to nine months — and British player Tara Moore, who was suspended in May 2022 while an investigation lasted 18 months before an independent tribunal determined that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by contaminated meat.

“Right now it’s a ripe time for us to really address the system, because the system and the structure obviously doesn’t work, it’s obvious,” Djokovic said. “So, I hope that in the ... near future that the governing bodies are going to come together of our tours and the tennis ecosystem and try to find a more effective way to deal with these processes.”