can someone tell me the difference between UEFA Cup and Champions League? How do they each work? thanks!

Champions League are for the winners of the domestic leagues(and top 3-4 for the best leagues), and the UEFA-cup is for the teams just below the CL-places.

Champions League has a group-stage, and then knockout-stages for the best two teams in each of the eight groups. Each group has four teams.

The UEFA-cup is at a knock-out stage know, where two teams meet and the winner overall of the two legs goes through to the next stage, which is a group-stage. When the group-stage is over, knock-out-rounds until two teams remain.

More at http://www.uefa.com

sweet thanks for the info

Ok.


First off, there's elgibility for the Champions' League. Every UEFA-affiliated national football association's domestic league champion is automatically elgible, plus a certain number of runners-up determined by each particular association's position in the ever-so-whacky UEFA coefficient ranking list. I believe the maximum is 4 teams, so the most you'll ever see based on league results alone is the league champion plus positions 2 through 4. It was also decided that from hence forward the previous year's Champions' League winners will receive an automatic bid. I'm pretty sure that starting next year it WILL count as one of that particular nation's bids as opposed to this year where England has five representatives due to Liverpool and Everton whining a lot.

So ok, great.

The competition is divided into three stages: the qualifying rounds, the group stage, and the knock-out rounds. That ol' UEFA coefficient ranking list comes back into play to determine exactly where each elgible team will begin competition in order to have the tournament "appropriately weighted."

This means that countries with shitty domestic leagues still have to have their representatives start out in the first qualifying round, while countries like England get their top two teams in the group stages automatically, and their other two teams only have to play in the third and final qualifying round.


So anyway, the qualifying rounds consist of three home and home series through which teams advance based on aggregate goals scored. The teams that advance out of the third qualifying round move on to the group stage. At this point, the contest has been whittled down to 32 participants. The teams that failed to advance from said third qualifying round enter the UEFA Cup at whatever round they're on.

The group stage consists of 8 groups of 4 teams each. Each team plays the other three in the group twice, home and away. After all six matches have been played, the top two teams in each group (based on the normal style of collecting points in a league--3 for a win, 1 for a draw) advance to the knock-out round. The third place teams enter the third round of the UEFA Cup, and the fourth place teams are eliminated entirely.

The knock-out round is combated on a bracket with each matchup consisting of a home-and-home series determined by aggregate goals scored. Teams eliminated each round here are out completely and do not get to participate in the UEFA Cup. The final is a single game played at a (hopefully neutral) site determined in advance. Last year the final was played in Istanbul, for example.




The UEFA Cup format is similar, although not exactly the same by any means. Elgible clubs are a certain number of those that finish behind the champions of their domestic league, clubs that win the national cup competition (and league cup in some countries like England), plus a few other sources like the three winners of the finals in the Intertoto Cup, and three clubs based on a random draw from amongst the highest rated clubs in each country in UEFA's Fair Play system that are not already elgible.

Also of note, if the cup winners are already elgible, the berth goes to the runners-up. If the runners-up are elgible, I believe the berth goes to the next finishing position in the league.



So using England as an example...


5th place, the FA cup winners, and the Carling Cup winners all qualify for the UEFA Cup, plus the possibility of a 4th berth based on the Fair Play league.





*breathes*