UEFA Europa League Round of 16: Better than the Champions League?
By Stanley Croyance
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europa league 2010
What a very pleasant and refreshing Thursday evening I had. My personal menu was an entrée of Werder Bremen vs Valencia, main course of Sporting Lisboa vs Atletico Madrid, and for dessert, the entire extended highlights package of the remaining 6 matches. There are some that say the Europa League is a bad cup, a meaningless cup that has no glamour, but on the evidence of tonight, I think it may have more to offer neutral football fans than the main Champions League.


1) Goals.
In the Round of 16 in the Champions League, we had 47 goals, in the Europa League, it was 53 goals. Last night, in the Bremen game, it was 4-4 and the Sporting Lisboa game was 2-2, that is a whopping 12 goals I saw, compared to the 5 i saw in the Chelsea and Barcelona matches the night before. 

2) Open Matches.
Having seen all the highlights, what is clear is that all the teams in the Europa League came to attack, and none sat back hoping for a close result, all the teams came out to try score goals. Whereas the Champions League is a long game where games are decided on minute details and teams play with caution, in this tournament, teams come 100% to win and win by out scoring the opposition. This was shown by Bremen trainer Thomas Schaaf bringing on a striker after only 20mins when they were 2-0 down, I'd be shocked to see a Champions League team do that so early.

3) Matches played simultaneously.
Whilst laudable in trying to show more games on TV in the Champions League by splitting the games apart, it has drawn out the process and taken away some of the extra spark of seeing scores in other games. Having two sides of the draw a week apart is a bit too much to take. Compare that to the Europa League, we saw Juventus fall big time to modest Fulham, see Werder Bremen come from the death, die and then come back and then die again, see Wolfsburg give their all in central Russia, Anderlecht see their hopes of a dream comeback scuppered after a very good performance, all in the space of 4 hours!


I thoroughly enjoyed the Round of 16 in the Europa League, and I'm certainly going to watch the Quarter Finals with a keen eye now!
2  Comments
19.03.2010 07:40
prefer CL format of 2 games a day. had time to see Bordeaux Olimpiakos, was worth it. glad i'm not alone abt Europa league excitement. the wolfsburg rubin match was tense. too many chances were missed. it couldve easily been 4-3 to Wolfs if both had better finisher. but now there's no time to enjoy the other games. pity ---- still think we ought to shrink the CL, max of 2 teams for top leagues. an extra place for the country of reigning CL champion. why? compare group F quality with the rest. Barca and Inter showed real CL quality. sides like Rubin or Bordeaux offer the same opposition as Chelsea, Sevilla, Bayern or Arsenal. with less CL contenders, we have room for more games against each other. No offense to Fulham and Juve, but they ought to play Inter-Toto. It's that poor league which needs to be rebranded
22.03.2010 22:28
I guess in EL teams are not afraid to attack because the worst that can happen is being eliminated from the EL. This does not seem as bad as being eliminated from the CL.
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