The Champions League may hog all the attention, but as the Europa League enters the last-16 stage on Thursday it is time for the competition to get its due. For those paying attention the last round had Besiktas’s nail-biting shootout victory over Liverpool on penalties at a jumping Ataturk Stadium, Wolfsburg’s impressive demolition of Sporting, and a dramatic late Roma winner in Feyenoord. When compared to the ever-predictable string of European Cup results (honourable exceptions go to Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen) it is even more remarkable that the competition fails to capture the public imagination.
Europe’s second-string competition has suffered from a diminished reputation in England ever since the Uefa Cup was merged with the Cup Winners’ Cup back in 1999. The amalgamation of the two was designed to concentrate talent in one place as the Champions League grew ever larger, but instead seemed to irreparably damage the standing of the tournament. When Arsenal lifted the CWC in 1994 it was seen as a colossal achievement – as they defeated a Parma side in the final that boasted Tomas Brolin (in his svelte days), Faustino Asprilla and Gianfranco Zola.
Similarly, Chelsea’s 1998 triumph over Stuttgart, thanks to Zola’s winner, was a massive day for the west London club. In contrast Arsenal’s Uefa Cup final defeat to Galatasaray in 2000 is mostly remembered for the crowd trouble in Copenhagen on the day of the final. And since then, the two English winners of the Uefa Cup/Europa League – Liverpool in 2001 and Chelsea in 2013 – have viewed it very much as a consolation prize, and certainly not the focus of their season. England is missing out.
While the Champions League is the sole preserve of the rich and powerful, the Europa League offers a chance to everyone else, those locked out of Europe’s top table by the oligarchs and well-established dynasties. Dumping Champions League rejects into the last 32 certainly does not help its reputation, but Mauricio Pochettino’s team selection against Fiorentina seemed to indicate he viewed the outside chance of defeating Chelsea in the League Cup final as more important than European progress. Since when was England’s second cup competition more important than a European trophy? And one that now offers a Champions League place as a carrot for the victor to boot. Everton are the only team left flying the flag for Britain, and with Roberto Martínez’s struggles in the Premier League, a victory against Dynamo Kyiv would be a welcome boost.
But it is not just the clubs missing out – it is the fans too. The Europa League boasts some of the best up-and-coming sides, and players, in Europe. The aforementioned Ukrainians have Aleksandar Dragovic, a centre-back drawing admiring glances from Manchester United and Arsenal. A polished display against Martínez’s men could go a long way to convincing teams he is ready for the Premier League. A Romelu Lukaku mauling, on the other hand, will have the managers going back to the drawing board. At the other end there is Dieumerci Mbokani, a striker ripe for the picking who was linked with a host of English teams before opting to join Kyiv from Anderlecht. Goal number 12 on this compilation is particularly impressive.
And Dynamo are not the only Ukrainian side in the last 16, with the war-torn nation having one more qualifier than the combined might of these islands. Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk are certainly not a household name, and their biggest achievement in European football was as one of 11 runners-up in the Intertoto Cup of 2006 (now that was a worthless European competition), but Ajax certainly won’t be looking forward to their trip to Ukraine’s fourth-largest city. In the last round a 2-0 home win was enough to send another European establishment force, Olympiakos, crashing out – and a first-leg lead will be vital to Dnipro. Ajax are not the force of old, but they always have talented young players, with Davy Klaassen, Joël Veltman and Arkadiusz Milik all worth keeping an eye on for the future.
There is a couple of tasty domestic derbies too. From Spain, Villarreal and Sevilla must view this tournament as their best chance of Champions League qualification, but their inability to break into La Liga’s top four is no slight on two squads that boast the combined goalscoring talents of Kévin Gameiro, Luciano Vietto and Ikechukwu Uche, as well as a blast from the past in the shape of José Antonio Reyes, now reunited with his boyhood club.
Fiorentina v Roma is second versus fifth in Serie A, and if the prospect of watching Gervinho play is unlikely to draw the attention then the enduring talent of the Roma captain, Francesco Totti, is always worth your time; and Mo Salah is tearing it up in Florence.
But Italy’s best chance for the trophy perhaps lies with Rafa Benítez’s talented Napoli side, who face Dynamo Moscow. A Serie A team featuring Marek Hamsik and Gonzalo Higuaín should perhaps have got past Athletic Bilbao in the Champions League qualifiers, but a win in this tournament would allow Benítez to equal Giovanni Trapattoni’s record of three Uefa Cup medals – so perhaps it was a deliberate ploy.
The pick of the round is surely Wolfsburg v Internazionale. Inter – traditionally a part of the European elite – are slumming it as they seek to rebuild under Roberto Mancini. Nemanja Vidic may be the most familiar face but the Serie A strugglers are slowly but surely building an exciting young squad who are likely to develop over the next year or two. Xherdan Shaqiri joined in January from Bayern Munich, where he could not muscle his way past Franck Ribéry or Arjen Robben to get in the team, but the lightning-quick Swiss winger is still only 23 and has plenty of time to rebuild his reputation. He is joined in the midfield by a couple of highly promising Croats. Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic have drawn envious glances from across the continent – and together could form the backbone of a new Inter team, as well as the next great Croatia side.
But it is their opponents, Wolfsburg, who perhaps deserve the boost in profile most. Borussia Dortmund’s struggles are well documented, and it is Die Wölfe who have picked up the baton to struggle valiantly to prevent Bayern Munich’s inevitable Bundesliga triumph. Second in the league, their stand-out talent has been Chelsea cast-off Kevin De Bruyne. Eyebrows were raised when he joined the club for £18m in January 2014, but he has been a revelation in Germany, managing 21 assists and 11 goals in his 39 Bundesliga games thus far. His European record is equally impressive, three goals and three assists in eight Europa League matches mean there is already talk of a move back to the Premier League with Manchester United. So enjoy the Belgian while you can before Louis van Gaal sits him on the bench alongside Radamel Falcao, Juan Mata and whatever other attacking talent he decides to splurge on in the summer window.
I will concede one thing to the naysayers though – the Europa League theme isn’t a patch on the Champions League version.
