One of the great attractions of the League and FA Cups has always been the chance of a place in the UEFA Cup. Often towards the end of the season, this has been very important to non-Big 4 Premiership teams who are progressing well in the cups but are out of the running for European places on the table. Even if they just made it to the final, the chances were that their opponent probably would have qualified for Europe already and the place would be theirs. Now with the restructure, more European places are available to teams directly through the League. What's more the task of winning a place through the Cups is made harder, as now the place reverts to the table rather than the runner-up if the champion has already qualified. Is there a risk that this is going to seriously damage the quality of these Cup competitions, which were already getting the short end of the stick from fixture overcrowding? I suppose the FA Cup will continue to be prestigious due to its history, but the League Cup already struggles with teams fielding second-rate sides.
The FA Cup winners need to be qualified for CL in order for the other finalist to get a spot (the worst spot in this case) in the EL. The league cup runner-up will never get a spot. It is actually one team less, because there is no UI cup anymore (UI cup was like a 99.9% chance for a club from the top 6 countries to get an extra team in EL). One of three EL spots will be distributed through the league cup, so there should be enough incentive to field the best team. Otherwise it would maybe be better to just abolish this second cup.
Is this true? I thought neither Cup runner-up would qualify if the winner had already qualified through the league. Well, technically I suppose, but plenty of English teams never bothered with Intertoto even if they qualified because of the inconvenience of playing over the summer.
"neither"? Fa Cup RU gets a spot, if the FA Cup winner is already qualified for CL. (If the FA Cup winner is already qualified for EL it still gets the FA Cup spot, because the FA Cup Winner spot is the best spot for EL) League Cup RU never gets a spot.
