Dear ladies and gentlemen, The draw for the group stage of the Europa league 2012-2013 season starts at 12:00PM GMT The pots: Pot 1: PSV, FC Twente, Atletico Madrid, Internazionale, Olympique Lyon, Liverpool, Olympique Marseille, Sporting Portugal, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayer Leverkusen, Bordeaux, VfB Stuttgart. Pot 2: FC Basel, FC Metalist Kharkov, Panathinaikos, Athletic de Bilbao, FC Copenhagen, Fenerbahçe SK, Rubin Kazan, Napoli, Udinese, Club Brugge, Hapoel Tel-Aviv FC, Hannover 96 Pot 3: Lazio Roma, Steaua Bucharest, Sparta Prague, Rosenborg BK, Newcastle United, BSC Young Boys, Levante, RC Genk, Borussia Mönchengladbach, FK Partizan, FC Viktoria Pilsen, FC Dnjepr Dnjepropetrovsk Pot 4: Helsingborgs, CS MarÃtimo, Rapid Wien, Académica de Coimbra, Anzhi, NK Maribor, AIK, AEL Limassol FC, Hapoel Kiryat Shmona FC, Molde FK, Videoton FC, Neftçi PFK The draw can be seen on Uefa.com
Crikey. How crap are we, UEFA? Best result has to be Twente, Brugge and any of pot 4 bar Anzhi. Worst case has to be Inter, Fenerbahce, Anzhi. Still think it's complete horseturds that a Champs League loser falls into this competition. And I thought UEFA knew what they were doing. Might as well have one European League, no relegation, no promotion, so the rest of us football clubs can continue the tradition of, well, football.
The pots are made up by clubs ranking in the Uefa coefficients lists. NUFC hasn't played in Europe in a while which lowers your rating considerately. http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/club/index.html
Theres more champions league losers to come later too which i think is even more absurd. Man.City reportedly made £20 Million out of the CL last season going out in the group stage yet still get a chance in the Europa. Very unfair.
The third place qualification for the EL has been around since 2004-2005 and made sure there was not only competition for the first and second place, but also for the third place. Before 2004-2005, most of the groups were boring after 4 matches because the top teams would have qualified by then making the last two matches sort of obsolete and stadium weren't sold out then after. The Uefa fixed this with the third place EL ticket.
Draw in 10 minutes Live link: http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/season=2013/draws/index.html Eurosport link: http://cricfree.tv/euro-sports.php
Makes sense to me. Personally i hope we get an easy 4th pot team and 2 reasonably challenging teams from pots 1 and 2 just so it encourages Pardew to put out a good team for the group stages Inter and Bayern though from pot 1 no thank you.
Tbh I think the hardest draw is Atletico, Napoli, Anzhi. Easiest probably Twente, Hapoel, any bar Anzhi.
Group A: Liverpool Udinese Young Boys Anzhi Group J: Tottenham Hotspurs Panathinaikos Lazio Roma Maribor Group D: Bordeaux Club Brugge Newcastle United Maritmo
I really hope we get pot L... It would be good to stick it to Twente after how they messed us around with De Jong!
