Coud one feasibly merge the Europa League with the Champions League?

In at least some quarters, the Europa League is still found lacking in prestige. A shame.

So I wonder: Could one feasibly merge both European club competitions? Say with those who've secured what are presently EL and CL qualifying berths having to play additional knock-out rounds before encountering the more successful teams?

I suppose that if one were to do away with the group stage and make such a revamped CL a pure knock-out tournament, you'd manage to schedule games to make such a tournament workable.

I suppose one obstacle might be that at present, the group stages guarantee a club a larger base sum than might be the case in a pure knock-out tournament. Though perhaps one could fashion things in such a way that this isn't such an issue.

Too me, such a tournament seems more attractive than the present EL/CL split. Any team, no matter at what stage it enters the tournament would have the chance to climb to the very top of European football. That alone would make an otherwise obscure EL pairing a more attractive game to watch, methinks!

So, do you think such an EL/CL merger and conversion to a pure knock-out tournament make sense? In sport-terms and financially?

I like the idea. Am I missing something?

How many more games do you want some of these teams to play?

Currently, a team that directly qualified for the CL will have played 13 games if it reaches the final.

The scheme I have in mind actually cuts down the number of games for most teams. The 16 best teams in Europe would join the tournament at a last-32 stage. So they'd only play 9 games if making it to the final.

The play-in stage (to get into the last-32) could be formatted in a number of ways to also keep those teams' games within 15 max games (as some already play).

As far as I got everything right your idea sounds to me like the old UEFA cup competition model from the 60s to 80s plus the merge to a single competition.

In sport-terms it absolutely makes sense, because there is a cup atmosphere at every stage and it is more likely that surprises happen. It would lower the revenue of the big teams stronger than the ones of the rest of the teams and this would be an additional effect to let even more surprises happen.

Financially it does not make sense if the objective is maximizing total revenue of all clubs (and that is what the associations and participating clubs want). The reason is that high viewing figures are reached with international known clubs (stars, history, stories) and as a consequence high investments from sponsors. And the current model has the advantage that it is likely to see matches involving big clubs multiple times during the tournament.

So I think the model is not in the interest of football associations and the clubs participating in the competition, because it drains money from the tournament to other areas --> less money for players, player managers, Blatter, Platini and all the other ones.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/access2011.html says the 2011-2012 Champions League and Europa League will have 237 combined clubs. Is that how many clubs you would invite? If 16 clubs start in the Round of 32 and 221 clubs competed for 16 spots that would require at least four rounds before the Round of 32. What you're proposing might be complicated like the FA Cup with clubs entering in different rounds. Would you like to make a plan where for each round you gave the number of clubs entering that round and participating in that round? How many rounds would you do draws for at a time? You wouldn't have an elimination round with first place clubs vs. second place clubs if there was no Group Stage, so when would seeding be determined by club coefficients and when would anybody be randomly able to play anybody else? There's a big break between the Group Stage and the starting of the knockout rounds. If your format was used what rounds would be before and after that break?

Interesting points.
I just think that one of the most important things removing prestige from the EL are:

1) Too many teams from the big leagues enter the CL
4 teams means that the 5th team and downward are usually significantly worse than the best teams. When it was only champions, sometimes the difference between 1st and 2nd was very small and quite often the best team was actually in UEFA rather than the Champions Cup. I understand this is gone, though, but maybe only having 2 teams per country at most in the CL might help as a sort of compromise.

2) the fact that CL losers are demoted into it. I think this also does a lot to remove prestige from the EL as the big teams when they get there they just ignore it and play second string teams or without any motivation thinking about their weekend match.

Do you think that the previous format (before 1999) UEFA cup had a bit more prestige or not really?

If there was a two club per country limit then Barcelona wouldn't have won the 2008-2009 Champions League because they qualified by finishing third in La Liga.

They rightfully would have won the Europe League / UEFA cup, which would have hold as much as prestige, just as pre 1999.

But he brings up a good point that the best team in Europe might very well not be competing for the trophy which goes to the European champions.

Also reducing the CL would severely damage the hopes of "lesser" clubs who dream of playing in Europe. What chance would, say, Fulham have of playing in Europe if only #3-5 in the league table qualified for EL? Not much (and allowing more teams entering the EL is not an option as its bloated enough already).

So I say don't touch either competition until we've established that the EL lacks prestige or is uninteresting to fans of "lesser" clubs.

Thing is, before 1990 the world was totally fine even though the best team of Europe did not neccessarily play in the cup of the champions... If I had to chose between going back to that and what Kampfschwein proposed I'd go back to that tbh.

european league

That says it all. It's a consolation tournament. Nothing more. It's 2nd Tier. A continent-wide 2nd division.

If you want the E League to be more prestigious, have it represent a higher spot than 17th place. Which mean you'd have to include CL Octofinal losers. Or quarterfinal losers, and so on. And there's no time to do that.

So just leave it how it is: a 2nd chance tournament for teams who already have their CL and relegation fates already secured. CL qualifying and relegation avoidance should always be much more important than the E League

I wouldn't want them to combine but I just wish they would make some improvements to the Europa League.

I love how you get a bigger variety of clubs rather than just a super league tournament. You have big clubs that have fallen down on their luck. You have some up and coming clubs and you have some clubs from countries previously not mentioned when it comes to the European league tournaments.

I hate the Thursday choice for a day. Is it not to compete with that week's CL matches? You see some of the Europa League matches half full so it isn't like playing on it's own day is working. The Thursday makes that next weekend's match difficult to schedule.

The serious lack of money reward from it causes many clubs to blow it off as well.

I actually sometimes enjoy watching the EL more as you get a ton of different clubs playing which I actually enjoy rather than the same old same old in the CL but they should make an effort to improve it.

Well, they're already somewhat combined since one is a consolation tournament of the other. Like a 3rd place match is still part of the tournament it's in.

Maybe they haven't done it because it wouldn't be fair to the CL teams that qualified out of their groups. Their 2nd chance at the next year's CL, other than league play, is winning the CL. E League teams' 2nd chance would be by winning the much easier E League. Not fair at all.

if that were the case you'd have teams that crashed out of the cl winning the el dominating the el, which they don't...

Well, they don't dominate the EL but they have a decent shot at winning it, which is more than you could say about their CL hopes. Two of the last 3 winners and 7 of the last 12 semifinalists of the EL were CL drop-outs.

In the last 3 years, only one EL winner would have needed the titleholder berth for CL qualification. 1 of 24 CL 3rds would have qualified for CL via titleholder berth. The same number of CL group 2nds won the CL. Though Inter didn't need the berth either...

It is somewhat unfair that CL 3rds would have an "easier" path to a titleholder berth, but it's still so unlikely that it's won and needed that I think the added recognition for the EL winner might be worth it.

This.

I also agree, keep it as it is because it allows a large variety of teams in it in but yes it needs an automatic group stage berth to the CL like they do in south america.

It also does play a large part in determining a countries UEFA cooffiencent which I like because it kinda helps show how deep a league is when you win a league that has a few teams doing well in Europe

The Nissan Cup champ doesn't get an auto group stage berth. It gets a prelim berth unless it earns a group berth thru the league, then the title doesn't matter.

That'd be a sensible way to upgrade the EL.

I suspect it's the timing. The EL would have to finish weeks before the CL, so its winner could enter <n> rounds before the final.

??? The EL is decided at roughly the same time other CL spots are clinched.

Agreed, a direct spot on the group stages to the Europa league winner or the defeated finalist if the winner gets direct entry through domestic league qualification.