UEFA Conference League: Everything you need to know
From the official Chelsea FC website:
Chelsea are trying to book a place in the group phase of the Conference League when our tie with Servette is decided tonight. Here’s a rundown of UEFA’s newest competition and what to expect this season…
Tournament history
A third season-long UEFA men’s football club competition was introduced in 2021/22 in the form of the UEFA Europa Conference League, with the aim of making continental football more inclusive with a wider range of associations involved.
It runs on Thursday nights – alongside the UEFA Europa League – and more than 170 teams are involved across the season, including at least one from each UEFA association and with clubs transferring from either the Champions League or Europa League.
The previous winners are Roma (2022), West Ham United (2023) and Olympiacos (2024).
Ahead of this season, it was renamed the UEFA Conference League.
Qualification
The first matches in this season’s competition took place on 11 July, before the 2023/24 campaign had even ended for our players who reached the final stages of the European Championship and Copa America.
The play-off stage consists of one club entering from each of the top five football associations, 30 winners of Conference League third-round qualifying ties and 13 losers from Europa League third-round qualifiers.
The 24 sides who progress, plus 12 teams who lose in the Europa League play-offs, will reach the league phase of the competition.
What is the new format?
As with the other UEFA competitions, 2024/25 is a season of change for the Conference League.
The biggest alteration is to the group stage, which will become a single 36-team league in which each side faces six different teams (three at home, three away). The draw will be made tomorrow (Friday 30 August).
The top eight clubs at the end of the league stage advance directly to the round of 16, while sides finishing from ninth to 24th will contest the knockout round play-offs to earn their spot among the final 16.
All ties from the knockout stage up to the final are played over two legs.
When are the Conference League fixture dates?
Matchday 1: 3 October 2024
Matchday 2: 24 October 2024
Matchday 3: 7 November 2024
Matchday 4: 28 November 2024
Matchday 5: 12 December 2024
Matchday 6: 19 December 2024
Knockout round play-offs: 13 & 20 February 2025
Round of 16: 6 & 13 March 2025
Quarter-finals: 10 & 17 April 2025
Semi-finals: 1 & 8 May
Final 28 May 2025
Where is the Conference League final?
Stadion Wroclaw in Poland will host the 2025 final, following on from Tirana (Albania), Prague (Czech Republic) and Athens (Greece) in the previous three editions.
The stadium is home to two-time Polish champions Slask Wroclaw and is the third-biggest in the country, with a capacity of over 40,000.
It was used at three games for Euro 2012 and also stages national-team fixtures.
What do the winners get?
Other than a trophy that has only been lifted by three other clubs – and would make Chelsea the first to complete the full set of European honours – a Conference League triumph guarantees entry to the league stage of the following season’s Europa League if the winners have not qualified for the Champions League via domestic competition.
The anthem
It’s not the iconic Champions League music that we’ve become accustomed to over the past two decades, but it’s also nothing we haven’t heard before: the Conference League uses the same anthem as the Europa League, which was composed by Michael Kadelbach.
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