New fan of UEFA needing questions answered

[fscat]

I've always been a soccer fan, but only into international competitions such as World Cup. However, I have recently become more of a fan of club competitions and tournaments such as UEFA. How do all these UEFA competitions work? I always thought it was just a big tournament between the top two or three teams of each participating country's premier league. Is this not the case? Thanks for taking the time to answer this new fan's questions.

[glennaldo_sf]

UEFA runs two main competitons each year - the Champions League and the UEFA Cup. The UEFA Champions League is the big one. It was origionally designated only for the league champions (ie premier league, serie A, La liga) of each UEFA country so basically each nation had only one team competing. However, about 8 years ago, UEFA decided to expand the tournament and allow some countries more than one team into the competition - so basically the top 4 teams from the English, Italian, and Spanish leagues qualify, the top 3 from Germany, France & Holland 2, etc.,etc. Basically the 32 top clubs from the previous years European leagues are drawn into eight groups of four. Each team plays each team in it's group twice - home and away and the top two teams from each group qualfiy for the round of 16. From here on it is a knockout tournament all the way to the final. In each round there are two games with each team playing once home and once away. The scores of the two matches are combined to form the "aggregate score" and if the score is tied on aggregate the team that scores the most goals away from home is the winner. Otherwise, the game goes to extra time and then penalties. The final itself is a single game played at a neutral venue. This year it will be played in Istanbul. The Champions Leauge was formerly known as the European Champions Cup until 1993.

The UEFA cup is a little harder to explain. It is basically a competition open for teams that finished highest in their domestic league but just outside of their countries allocated champions league spots. So basically the 5th and 6th place teams in England qualify for the UEFA cup. Nations cup winners (ie: FA Cup) also qualify for the UEFA cup if they did not already qualify for th Champions League. The UEFA cup format is pretty similar to the Champions League without the 6 game first round roundrobin. The UEFA cup is not as lucrative and obviously the quality of football is a step down. Also, the third place teams of the champions league are eliminated from the Champions League and thrown into the UEFA cup.

I know it sounds a little complicated - to get a more thorough description, check out UEFA's official website - http://www.uefa.com and check out their corresponding UEFA and Champions League sites - they explain everything. Hope that helped...

[fscat]

So does every European country get at least one team into the Champions' Cup? Or is there a Champions' Cup for the elite leagues' teams and a UEFA Cup for everyone else?
Also, is there a cup to see how the world's best clubs would do in against each other. For instance to see if Club America (Mexico) could hang with Manchester United, or if Brazil's best club team of that year could compete with the top team of Italy. Thanks

[glennaldo_sf]

So does every European country get at least one team into the Champions' Cup? Or is there a Champions' Cup for the elite leagues' teams and a UEFA Cup for everyone else?
Also, is there a cup to see how the world's best clubs would do in against each other. For instance to see if Club America (Mexico) could hang with Manchester United, or if Brazil's best club team of that year could compete with the top team of Italy. Thanks

As I said the Champions League round robin consists of 32 teams. Sixteen of these 32 teams qualify automatically for the round robin (aka the 1st round) while the other sixteen places have to be earned through qualifying via the preliminaries. To answer your question - yes - every nation that belongs to UEFA gets a shot at qualifying for the champions league. Even the champions of the Faroe Islands compete in the preliminaries. However, very rarely do these teams make it to the 1st round because they usually run into teams from traditionally bigger footballing nations. In the premiership - the top two teams (currently Chelsea and Arsenal) will receive byes to the Champions League group stage while the 3rd and 4th teams (Man United and Everton) will have to compete in the final preliminary round (a two legged playoff) - usually against a team from a place like say Austria or Poland to qualify for the round robin.

As for an international club championship. There's just not enough time (and most importantly $$) or interest for this. They had one five years ago in Brazil where Manchester United played teams like Necaxa of Mexico and Corinthians of Brazil and Real Madrid also competed. It seemed like a good idea on paper but in reality it was kind of a wasted tournament as the top teams did not take it that seriously and fielded weak sides. Ironically, there's going to be another one in Japan at the end of this year but there are serious doubts about whether or not the tournament will be a success. There used to be an annual one off "Toyota Cup" competition which pitted the Champions of the European Champions league with the South American Copa Libertadores (sp.???) champions which was played in Tokyo but even that's been scrapped due to a lack of interest.

If you are new to soccer and want to investigat more - check out these websites:

http://www.fifa.com - FIFA's official website

http://www.fifaworldcup.com - the official website of the 2006 world cup. Good place to get qualification stats.

http://www.uefa.com - official site of European soccer's governing body, UEFA

http://www.soccernet.com - the online soccer bible for getting the latest news and info. Concentrates alot on British football.

http://www.worldsoccer.com

[Matschr]

This is the best UEFA-Cup and UEFA Champions League explaining site:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/