ToffeeWeb - Season 2008-09

The Mail Bag

Europe League - seedings

Well today was the draw for the 1st and 2nd qualifying rounds of the Europa Cup. So, 6 weeks this Friday, we know who we are going to play on Thursday 20 & 27 August.

First off ? Everton are ranked 52 in Uefa this season. As these are based on the last 5 seasons, then we are behind Newcastle and Boro, who did so well 3 or more years ago. But as we know, they, Spurs and 9 other teams are not in Europe so that makes our effective qualification 40th.

Now of these 40, 17 of them have qualified for the Champions League group stage ? which makes us, at worst, 20th seeds in the Europa League. Guarantees a seeding against a lower ranked team ? like last year when we got Standard Liege.

Uefa do seem to have come up with the most complicated system this year for the Champions League. They have spilt it this year so that in the 3rd Qualifying round there are 20 teams who were champions of their league and the 10 losers from those matches come into the same round in the Europa Cup that we are in. Of the unseeded teams, there is no one there to fear. The 10 winners then play another round and 5 winners go into the Champions League and the losers into the Europa League Groups.

The problem is that there is also 10 teams who did not win their title and the 5 losers from those matches come into our Qualification round of the Europa Cup. Some of them could be tough but hopefully, if they are the good teams, they will have a high ranking so will be seeded and we will not have to play them! The 5 winners are then joined by 5 teams from England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France and the losers come into the Europa League group stages.

And the final piece is there are 8 teams ranked above us who enter the Europa League in the rounds before us and could get knocked out ? unlikely, we know, but more strange things have happened.

So where does it leave us?

Worst seeding = 20th
Assume all seeded teams win their 3rd round CL Matches (Shaktak Donesk, Sporting Lisbon, Panathinaikos, Olympiakos, Celtic) we are seeded 15th
Assume the higher seeds entering Europa League in 2nd or 3rd round are knocked out (Roma, PSV, Hamburg, Steaua Bucharest, Fenerbahce, Basle, Lille, Sporting Braga) we are seeded 7th

So anywhere between 8th and 20th seeds. So who will we face? I would love it to be Toulouse or even better, Guingamp. They won the French Cup and finished halfway down Division 2 and located in the middle of Brittany, just a 4-hour drive from where we are on holiday. Everton and Me, we are never that lucky...
Phil Roberts, Kelsall, Cheshire Posted 22/06/2009 at 12:48:49

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Tony Ateman
1 Posted 23/06/2009 at 16:28:38

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My brain hurts!

Liam Reilly
2 Posted 23/06/2009 at 16:21:19

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Doesn?t matter who we draw, it?ll be squeaky bum time. Whether it be Villarreal, the Mentalists, Liege or some no hoper.

Anyone remember UCD in the first round of the Cup Winners Cup in Ireland in 85? We drew 0-0, Sharpy missed an open goal and only went through 1-0 on aggregate. They nearly scored at Goodison too, which would have sent us out.

Mike Galley
3 Posted 23/06/2009 at 17:01:41

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Liam, I remember the UCD tie well. I was only 14 at the time and didn’t appreciate how difficult we made that tie. I still wake up in a cold sweat when I remember them trying to build an attack in the last 5 minutes!

Phil Guyers
4 Posted 23/06/2009 at 21:14:19

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For this round it won’t matter if we are seeded 8th or 20th. The important thing is that we are seeded as opposed to unseeded and we definitely are.

We can be drawn against any of the 38 unseeded teams and at the moment only a few of them are definites. The trickiest potential opponent up to now is Genoa who finished 5th in Serie A. They haven’t been in Europe for a few years and have a poor coefficient.

However, I too remember UCD and believe that, whoever we get, we’ll have to be at our best to get through. The real rubbish will not get past the first three qualifying rounds.