UEFA Cup / Dan Fitch / 03 March 2009 / Leave a comment

This is the last year of UEFA Cup football in its current format and it's re-branding as the Europa Cup next year was an opportunity for UEFA to amend some mistakes but they've messed it up, as usual, says Dan Fitch.

Having watched my beloved Tottenham Hotspur lose at Wembley in the Carling Cup final, there were a couple of crumbs of comfort with which I could console myself. One was the fact that I got so drunk that I can remember very little about the experience. The other is that at least Spurs won't be involved in the UEFA Cup next season.

When Tottenham qualified for the competition in 2006 after several seasons without any European football, I for one was excited. A few seasons on and the UEFA Cup has lost all of its lustre. It's not just Premier League managers who consider the competition an irrelevancy, it's the fans as well.

The biggest problem I have with the competition is that the games are played on a Thursday. The result of playing games on a day when any right minded person should be watching Premier League darts, is that the following league game gets shifted back to a Sunday. When you then take into account the games that are switched to Sunday at the behest of the television companies, then the traditional 3pm Saturday kick off quickly becomes a thing of the past.

As a Spurs season ticket holder, I have thus far only seen one game in 2008/09 that kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday and that was back in August. Ironically, the main reason I wanted Tottenham to beat Shakhtar Donetsk was so that the forthcoming home game against Chelsea, would end up being shifted back to the Sunday, as I will be attending my sister's wedding on the Saturday.

Then there is the fact that the UEFA Cup is so long winded. There's a knockout round before the bizarre group stage, which consists of five teams playing everyone once, with three progressing. It's pretty difficult for any half-decent to not qualify from the group given the sort of opposition they're up against and by the final stages, many of the games are completely irrelevant.

Just when a lot of the dross has been eliminated from the competition, the third placed teams from the Champions League enter for the knockout rounds. There's just so many games, most of which are completely uncompetitive, that the UEFA Cup becomes fatiguing for both the players and the fans.

Such is the amount of money a club will receive for playing in the Champions League, that the extra burden of fixtures is well worth it. This is not the case for the UEFA Cup. Channel 5 and ITV4 are playing peanuts for the rights to these games, which is why Tottenham have opted to reject the offers for TV coverage of some of their home games this season, in order to ensure that they get a healthy attendance.

The current favourites to win the UEFA Cup are Manchester City at [7.0] (I know), with CSKA Moscow [8.6], Werder Bremen [9.4] and Hamburg [10.5].

UEFA have realised that their second competition is failing and have decided to re-brand. The smart alternative to the Champions League, would have been a straight knockout competition with no seeding, but that would be far too uncomplicated for UEFA.

Next season will see the birth of the Europa League, which basically follows the format of the Champions League, only with much weaker teams. The group stage will now consist of four teams playing each other home and away, which at least is a lot fairer than the present system. The top two will go through to the next round.

Unfortunately, UEFA have decided to persist with the third placed teams from the Champions League, joining the competition in the knockout rounds. Why should these sides be rewarded for abject failure?

So will the new Europa League be more exciting for the fans and the TV companies than the present format? It's unlikely. However UEFA decide to re-format the competition, the main problem remains that the majority of the quality European sides are playing in the Champions League. Back in the day when only league champions would play in the European Cup, then the UEFA Cup was full of good sides, but those days are gone.

The Champions League could have been the key to the success of the Europa League, but once again UEFA have missed a trick. By awarding the winners of the Europa League qualification for the following season's Champions League, UEFA would at a stroke ensure that the teams involved would take it seriously.

There is only one European club competition that matters and it is the key to the Europe's secondary competition finally winning back some status.