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Spurs in the Europa League: Road to Gdańsk

chrissivad

Staff
May 20, 2005
51,646
58,072
I wonder if governments would be flexible letting just the squads travel and quarantine to play games.
 

Marty

Audere est farce
Mar 10, 2005
39,885
62,562
I listened to a podcast saying that the europa will be played on the same days as the CL next season. Can anyone confirm/deny this?
No, it's the same as it's always been. CL Tuesday/Wednesday, EL Thursday in the same midweek.
 

yankspurs

Enic Out
Aug 22, 2013
41,883
71,188
Uefa being uefa will disqualify 40 teams before finally realizing they should have cancelled the competition in the first place. If it werent so much money, clubs should just opt out of playing in the competition this year. Better to be safe. Traveling across Europe in this environment is not
 

Marty

Audere est farce
Mar 10, 2005
39,885
62,562
I wonder if governments would be flexible letting just the squads travel and quarantine to play games.
Professional athletes have to take so many precautions as it is that I assume this will be the case. Private planes for the squad, only allowed to be sealed off at their hotel or training/playing in the stadium, all precautions followed.
 

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
Poland, Hungary, Greece and Cyprus have signed up to offer neutral backup venues for the qualifying rounds in the event that a home tie can't be played

In other news, the Preliminary Round Draw takes place at 12 on Sunday, featuring teams we could of course face in a couple of rounds time.

Seeded:

Unseeded:

All ties will be played as a single leg on Thursday 20th August, and teams from the same nation cannot face each other (i.e. Lincoln Red Imps cannot draw St Joseph's).
 
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LSUY

Well-Known Member
Jul 12, 2005
24,010
66,826
Lmao how is that fair


The second this rule risks the participation of teams from England, Spain and Italy UEFA's binning it. There's no profit to be made in running a competition full of clubs from France, Hungary and Bulgaria.
 

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
The second this rule risks the participation of teams from England, Spain and Italy UEFA's binning it. There's no profit to be made in running a competition full of clubs from France, Hungary and Bulgaria.
I'd be surprised if it's used at all - no more than a contingency measure. In my opinion, the major countries will make exemptions if needed to allow matches to go ahead. And others will either do similar, or be able to find a neutral venue. Even for smaller teams, they'll either think they have a chance of going through with home advantage, or be playing someone so big (e.g. us) that they can probably make a bit off TV money - they'll have little reason to forfeit.
 

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
Tomorrow afternoon sees the 20-21 European club competitions officially start with the UEFA Champions League Champions Path Preliminary Round Semi-Final. In theory these are teams we could face in the Europa League group stage (Champions have a separate route through qualifying so we cannot face them before that point) - Linfield got to the Playoff round last year, but they're all rank outsiders. Both games are played at 2PM from UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, with the winners playing a Final at 5pm on Tuesday at the same venue for a place in the Champions Path First Qualifying Round.

Tre Fiori San Marino vs Northern Ireland Linfield
Drita Kosovo vs Andorra Inter Club d'Escaldes
 

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
Tre Fiori 0-2 Linfield
Drita 2-1 Inter Club d'Escaldes

Therefore Drita play Linfield in the Champions League Preliminary Round Final on Tuesday, while Tre Fiori and Inter Club d'Escaldes drop into the Europa League at the Second Qualifying Round Champions Path stage.

The first qualifying round of the Champions League has also been drawn - the losers from this will also drop into the Europa League at the same round:

CLQ1.png


Celtic are of course very likely to end up in one of the group stages and get a kind draw here; Dundalk will be hoping to make the Europa groups (that'd be a top away day!) and probably have a 50/50 shot at getting a round further here first.

Tomorrow is the draw for the First Qualifying Round of the Europa League - the winners from this will be potential opponents for us in qualifying, with plenty of UK and Irish teams entering here (Aberdeen, Motherwell, The New Saints, Shamrock Rovers, Derry City, Bohemians and Bala Town along with those hoping to progress from the Preliminary Round).

ELQ1.png
 
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Marauder

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2008
657
2,800

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
Thankfully it's all going swimmingly so far....


After much fannying around, this game plus a couple of others were awarded to the home team. In other words, if you inadvertently travel to an away game with players or staff who are Covid-positive, the authorities may stop the entire squad from playing. You can send out a second squad (and UEFA are being flexible on squad registration rules for this), but if they also have a Covid-positive case, you're out of luck and the game will be awarded to the home side. Hopefully we're less likely to be effected by this given the Premier League's testing regime appears to be solid - the high-profile victims are Slvoan Bratislava who were deemed to have forfeited a CL qualifier against a Farose side they'd have expected to beat comfortably.

CLQ1R.png


No shocks involving the UK and Irish clubs in the Champions League First Qualifying Round, although Linfield ran Legia Warsaw close being 0-0 at 75 minutes before going down to 10 men. In fact, few shocks at all really which can only be a good sign for us - the biggest being Astana's 6-3 reverse at Dynamo Brest. The losers now fall into the Europa League qualifiers, but will go into a seperate Champions Path, so we can't draw any of them until the Group Stage.

Tonight and tomorrow sees the Second Qualifying Round ties:

CLQ2.png


We start to see some more interesting games, especially in the League Path. Some of the losers from those League Path ties can face us in Europa qualifiers since they didn't win their domestic leagues - they'll enter the 3rd qualifying round. Because of their coefficients the only potential loser who'd be unseeded at that stage is Lokomotiva, although AZ and PAOK may be unseeded come the 4th and final Europa qualifying round and would be interesting opponents. Celtic have maybe a tougher tie than it appears in Ferencvárosi - they drew 0-0 home and away against Espanyol, away to Ludogorets and at home to CSKA Moscow last season, and even beat CSKA 1-0 away.

Back in the Europa League itself, the Preliminary Round finished as follows:

ELPR.png


Good to see the Northern Irish clubs progress through one round at least (they won't much fancy their odds of going much further...), but Barry Town and St Joseph's should be doing better than that.

The First Qualifying Round takes place mainly on Thursday. Teams winning their ties here will join us in the Second Qualifying Round, drawn on the 31st of August, although the bigger ones (e.g. APOEL, Malmo, Partizan, Steaua Bucharest, Maribor, Rosenborg, Lech Poznan, Aberdeen and The New Saints) will be seeded and therefore unavailable as opponents.

ELQ1D.png


Plenty of UK and Irish interest here, and some relatively kind draws - Derry City, Bala Town, Lincoln Red Imps and Shamrock Rovers will all fancy their chances, while the two Scottish teams are expected to progress with ease. From our point of view, let's hope as many of the nightmare away trips as possible are eliminated - on this occasion we could really do without the likes of Israel, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in particular on a Thursday night in a packed schedule!

Derry City actually play tonight, and at half time are drawing 1-1 at FK Riteriai.
 
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fishhhandaricecake

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2018
18,702
46,941
After much fannying around, this game plus a couple of others were awarded to the home team. In other words, if you inadvertently travel to an away game with players or staff who are Covid-positive, the authorities may stop the entire squad from playing. You can send out a second squad (and UEFA are being flexible on squad registration rules for this), but if they also have a Covid-positive case, you're out of luck and the game will be awarded to the home side. Hopefully we're less likely to be effected by this given the Premier League's testing regime appears to be solid - the high-profile victims are Slvoan Bratislava who were deemed to have forfeited a CL qualifier against a Farose side they'd have expected to beat comfortably.

View attachment 72250

No shocks involving the UK and Irish clubs in the Champions League First Qualifying Round, although Linfield ran Legia Warsaw close being 0-0 at 75 minutes before going down to 10 men. In fact, few shocks at all really which can only be a good sign for us - the biggest being Astana's 6-3 reverse at Dynamo Brest. The losers now fall into the Europa League qualifiers, but will go into a seperate Champions Path, so we can't draw any of them until the Group Stage.

Tonight and tomorrow sees the Second Qualifying Round ties:

View attachment 72253

We start to see some more interesting games, especially in the League Path. Some of the losers from those League Path ties can face us in Europa qualifiers since they didn't win their domestic leagues - they'll enter the 3rd qualifying round. Because of their coefficients the only potential loser who'd be unseeded at that stage is Lokomotiva, although AZ and PAOK may be unseeded come the 4th and final Europa qualifying round and would be interesting opponents. Celtic have maybe a tougher tie than it appears in Ferencvárosi - they drew 0-0 home and away against Espanyol, away to Ludogorets and at home to CSKA Moscow last season, and even beat CSKA 1-0 away.

Back in the Europa League itself, the Preliminary Round finished as follows:

View attachment 72255

Good to see the Northern Irish clubs progress through one round at least (they won't much fancy their odds of going much further...), but Barry Town and St Joseph's should be doing better than that.

The First Qualifying Round takes place mainly on Thursday. Teams winning their ties here will join us in the Second Qualifying Round, drawn on the 31st of August, although the bigger ones (e.g. APOEL, Malmo, Partizan, Steaua Bucharest, Maribor, Rosenborg, Lech Poznan, Aberdeen and The New Saints) will be seeded and therefore unavailable as opponents.

View attachment 72254

Plenty of UK and Irish interest here, and some relatively kind draws - Derry City, Bala Town, Lincoln Red Imps and Shamrock Rovers will all fancy their chances, while the two Scottish teams are expected to progress with ease. From our point of view, let's hope as many of the nightmare away trips as possible are eliminated - on this occasion we could really do without the likes of Israel, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in particular on a Thursday night in a packed schedule!

Derry City actually play tonight, and at half time are drawing 1-1 at FK Riteriai.
This is awsome thanks for the updates.

Just seen Young Boys, I remember a Harry.R interview saying Clive Allen had been to watch them and told Harry how bad they were and that we’d be fine and then we turn up on the artificial pitch and are 3-0 down after 30 mins and he and Joe Jordan are turning to Clive Allen like I thought you said they were shit ?? can’t see Jose being quite that casual with his approach in European qualifiers. Oh Arry ey.

So who might we actually be drawn against and when will we know?
 
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