ROUND · every league

RUND EUROPA LEAGUE

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History

EUROPA LEAGUE · FOUNDED 1971

The UEFA Cup began in 1971 as the tournament for everyone the European Cup left out, and for decades it was arguably the harder one to win — deeper fields, two-legged finals, no seeding mercy. Renamed the Europa League in 2009, it now runs the same thirty-six-team league phase as its bigger sibling, and one club treats it as personal property.

The moments

1. 1972

   An all-English beginning

   The first UEFA Cup final was Tottenham against Wolverhampton over two legs — Spurs took it 3–2 on aggregate. The competition would stay a two-legged final for a quarter of a century.

2. 1998

   One final, one night

   The two-legged final was scrapped: Internazionale beat Lazio 3–0 in Paris in the first single-match final, and the tournament started producing occasions instead of aggregates.

3. 2006

   Sevilla begin collecting

   Sevilla thrashed Middlesbrough 4–0 in Eindhoven for their first European trophy. They have since won the competition seven times and never lost a final in it — no club owns a European trophy the way Sevilla own this one.

4. 2009

   The Europa League

   The UEFA Cup was rebranded, regrouped and given a Thursday-night identity of its own. The jokes wrote themselves; the football kept being good.

5. 2012

   Back-to-back, two clubs

   Radamel Falcao won it with Porto in 2011 — scoring a record seventeen goals in the run — and again with Atlético Madrid in 2012, back-to-back titles with different clubs, both unbeaten campaigns.

6. 2017

   United complete the set

   Manchester United beat Ajax in Stockholm days after the Manchester Arena bombing, won their first Europa League, and became one of five clubs to have won all three major European trophies.

7. 2019

   Four thousand miles to Baku

   Chelsea beat Arsenal 4–1 in the first all-English final of the modern competition, staged in Azerbaijan — Eden Hazard's last game for the club.

8. 2021

   Eleven–ten

   Villarreal, who had never won a major trophy, beat Manchester United on penalties in Gdańsk. Twenty-one perfect kicks, then United's goalkeeper missed against Villarreal's — 11–10, the longest shootout a European final has seen.

9. 2023

   Seven for Sevilla

   Sevilla beat Roma on penalties in Budapest for a seventh title from seven finals — against a José Mourinho side that had never before lost a European final.

10. 2024

    Unbeaten, until the final mattered most

    Atalanta beat Bayer Leverkusen 3–0 in Dublin — Ademola Lookman scoring all three — and ended Leverkusen's fifty-one-game unbeaten season in the one match it could not afford to lose. It was Atalanta's first major trophy in their history.

Records that stand

Roll of honour

Counts cover the UEFA Cup and Europa League together — same competition, renamed in 2009.