UEFA Europa League draw out: United to Face Mourinho's Fenerbache and more

The much anticipated and awaited Europa League draw is finally out. The revamped format sees all 36 teams forming a single league, with each entrant playing four home games and four away. With more teams featuring this time, the Europa League 2024-25 is expected to be one the best in recent times.

Europa League Draw Explained

UEFA's second-tier competition will now consist of 36 teams competing in a single league format. Each team will play eight different opponents as they aim to advance to the knockout phase, which will include an additional play-off round before the round of 16.

Innovatively, the traditional manual process of hand-drawing team names according to their seeding status has been replaced with AI technology. This change was prompted by the impracticality of the four-hour manual drawing process. The new system will still seed clubs based on their coefficient, but the matches will be drawn using dedicated software to ensure fairness. Importantly, to maintain transparency and fairness, UEFA emphasizes that the automated system will operate independently.

The teams were split into 4 pots. When a team in pot 1 was drawn, AI automatically picked up its 8 opponents and also where they played, that is home or away. Each team is going to face one team from each pot, one at home and the other away. Also, no two teams of the same country will go against each other in the league phase.

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Final look at the Europa League draw

Rangers from the Scottish Premiership will be facing off against both Manchester United and Tottenham in the opening stage of the revitalized Europa League.

Manchester United are set to have a reunion with their former manager, Jose Mourinho, following the draw which took place in Monaco.

Rangers were the first team to be drawn from pot one, which means they will have a home game against Spurs and a visit to Old Trafford.

Lyon, Olympiacos, Union Saint-Gilloise, Malmo, Steaua Bucharest, and Nice make up the rest of the initial Europa League fixtures for Philippe Clement’s team, with UEFA expected to confirm the full schedule on Saturday.

In addition, United, also in pot one, were drawn to play against Turkish side Fenerbahce, which is managed by Mourinho. The side from Old Trafford will be facing Porto, Steaua Bucharest and Czech side Viktoria Plzen in away fixtures.

Tottenham, having finished fifth in the Premier League last season, will play home games against Roma, AZ Alkmaar, Qarabag, and Swedish side Elfsborg. In addition to a trip to Ibrox, they will also travel to Ferencvaros of Hungary, Turkish giants Galatasaray, and Hoffenheim in Germany for their away fixtures.

🚨 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟: The Europa League draw in FULL.#UELdraw pic.twitter.com/EMj1ngBDH6

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) August 30, 2024

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