Europa League: Uefa tell managers & players to talk it up

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Europa League

Uefa hopes to boost the Europa League's profile by asking managers and players to refer to it in glowing terms.

European football's governing body is handing out prompt sheets to the communication departments of Europa League clubs before media conferences.

The sheet, headlined "Discover the Drama", includes phrases such as "prestigious" and "rich in heritage".

"The most important quality we want to communicate is that the Uefa Europa League is dramatic," it reads.

The Europa League continues to be overshadowed by the Champions League, despite a high-profile rebranding of the competition in 2009.

Winners of the Champions League take home £7.24m, while the Europa League winners earn a third of that and the difference in TV revenue is also vast.

The prompt sheet - found at Tottenham's media conference ahead of in Athens - asks press officers to brief players and coaches on the Europa League's virtues.

Other British clubs in the group stages include Liverpool and Newcastle.

"At the start of the press conference, below messages should be used by the club press officers," reads the prompt sheet.

"In addition, they may also be used by club press officers when briefing coaches and players as their would be of great support to us."

It then provides the following lines of advice:

  • Uefa Europa League is prestigious - it provides clubs, players and fans with the challenge of competing in European football for an elite trophy.
  • Uefa Europa League is rich in heritage having provided some of European football's most memorable moments and characters in recent years.

Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas, who in 2011, praised the competition on Wednesday.

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  • Give the winner a Champions League place. That would make them work for it.

  • Play the games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the weeks when Champions League games aren't being played.

  • To make it prestigous, All Uefa need to do is simple......Firstly allow no CL teams into the competition and secondly allow the winners of the competition the chance of competing in the Champions league the following season, even if it's at the qualifying stages.

    You would onlt then seen a up turn in the competition.

  • But it's the cup for the teams not good enough to get in the champions league. UEFA killed this competition themselves, especially as group losers from the Champions League drop into it halfway through

  • Too many games and too long-winded what with losers from the CL dropping in and group stages etc. Simplify it and make it purely a knock-out like the old UEFA Cup - and don't give the CL drop-outs a place!

  • This competition is dead in the water unless radical changes are made.
    1. Stop the CL rejects from dropping in.
    2. The winner gets a automatic CL place next season
    3. Make it a pure knock-out comp

  • If you want clubs to raise the profile of the Europa League, then you have start making it a more prestigious and exciting competition.

    Scrap the league format and revert back to a straight 2 legged knockout phase.
    Put more money into it to give clubs an incentive to go far in it.
    Let the winners have a place in the Champions League qualifiers.

    Do the latter, and everyone will want to win it.

  • Get rid of the leagues and make it a straight 'knock out'. Thats how it used to be and it will make the games more exciting. UEFA are always too busy looking for formats that eventually result in two of the bigger teams getting to the final.

    Granted i don't support a Premiership team (Bradford City) but i totally forgot that Europa League games were taking place

  • Until the advent of the Champions League, European fixtures were all special. Now we are swamped with matches in the CL group stages and then comes the Europa league as a second rate afterthought. Football is local - parochial even. It is hard to get enthusiastic about games between lesser clubs playing unknown foreign sides. It is the opposite of Derby matches and that's hard to make interesting!

  • Go back to the old style; One club of each country in the Champions Cup plus the previous year winner, the same with the Runner up, and the same for the Cup winners, it might make the national cup a bit more exciting. By doing it this way theclubs have to fight a bit harder in the national competetions to get into Europe. And play them on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

  • If UEFA want the Europa League to be taken seriously, why not make it something worth winning, with the prize being entry into the Champions League?

  • If Uefa wanted the competition to be "prestigious" and "rich in heritage", they shouldn't have changed the name and format of the competition.

    Uefa are ridiculous - they haven't got a clue.

  • Just as bank officials want politicians talk up QE, so do UEFA officials want footballers to talk up the EL.
    Hot air and propaganda will not hide the fact that both QE and the EL are inadequate and pointless.

  • How about giving a Champions League qualifier spot to the winners, you can bet that the managers/players/club owners would take it considerably more serious.

  • I'd like to see the Europa League and Champions League merged, straight knock out over two legs with no seedings. Will never happen but the drama would be amazing.

  • How can the Europa League be taken seriously, when team that don't qualify for the competition come in when they finish third in there group in the champions league. The winner of the Europa league is not promoted to the next champions league,
    Surely if teams come down then the winners should go up.

  • yes agree, the europa definitely needs to go back to knockout format. better for the fans, the players and managers and all clubs involved. basically better for everyone that matters in football, and not uefa, ad men, agents or other money grabbers.

  • I've always thought yeah, it's not as prestigious, but as a Liverpool fan, seeing our club throw out some inexperienced players annoys me slightly. Yes, it's a Thursday game, for what ever reason, so you want to rest players. Put it back to a Tuesday/Wednesday and it would attract more interest. It's one of two European competitions available, so teams should go for it in my opinion.

  • I think singing "Thursday nights, Channel 5" at the City fans was the highlight of last season. Now Europa clubs will be singing in pride !

  • How are we not having a blog on the FA report? And Ashley Cole is looking at a serious fine methinks..

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