The UEFA Europa League, abbreviated as UEL, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It is the second-tier competition of European club football, ranking below the UEFA Champions League and above the UEFA Conference League.
UEFA competitions, referred improperly by the mass media as European football, are the set of tournaments organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), generally in professional and amateur association football and futsal. The term was established in 1971 by the confederation to differentiate the men's football competitions under its administration, the first in history being held at a pan-European stage, from other international competitions carried out in the continent between 1960s and 1990s, such as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, International Football Cup and Karl Rappan Cup, Cup of the Alps, Balkans Cup and the restructured Mitropa Cup. All these tournaments were organised by private bodies and/or at least two national associations and concerning one of more regional areas of Europe, not being recognised by UEFA for historic-statistical purposes.
This page indexes the individual year in association football pages. Each year is annotated with one or more significant events as a reference point.
This page details statistics of the UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League. Unless notified these statistics concern all seasons since the inception of the UEFA Cup in the 1971–72 season, including qualifying rounds. The UEFA Cup replaced the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in the 1971–72 season, so the Fairs Cup is not considered a UEFA competition, and hence clubs' records in the Fairs Cup are not considered part of their European record.
Football clubs from La Liga have won a record 72 continental and worldwide titles. Real Madrid, the most successful of them, have won the European Cup on fifteen separate occasions and claimed 31 trophies in total. Barcelona have won twenty continental and worldwide titles, while Atlético Madrid have claimed eight. Sevilla have won eight and Valencia have won seven trophies to their name. Additionally, Deportivo La Coruña have been regulars in the UEFA Champions League, while Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol, Alavés, Zaragoza and Mallorca have all contested major finals in second-tier competitions and below. Smaller La Liga clubs, like Villarreal, Celta Vigo and Málaga have also found success in Europe, reaching the latter stages of the Champions League and winning the Europa League, as is the case with Villarreal.
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club first participated in a European competition in 1955. The first international cup they took part in was the Latin Cup in which they participated as champions of Spain. The competition lasted from 1949 to 1957 and Real Madrid won both tournaments which they entered, the same number as Barcelona and Milan. Since becoming the first Spanish club to enter the European Cup in 1955, Real has competed in every UEFA-organized competition, except the Intertoto Cup and Conference League. They have missed out on European football only twice in their history, in the 1977–78 and 1996–97 seasons.
With 48 continental trophies won, English football clubs are the third-most successful in European football, behind Italy (50) and Spain (67). In the top-tier, the UEFA Champions League, a record six English clubs have won a total of 15 titles and lost a further 11 finals, behind Spanish clubs with 20 and 11, respectively. In the second-tier, the UEFA Europa League, English clubs are third, with nine victories and eight losses in the finals. In the former second-tier UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, English teams won a record eight titles and had a further five finalists. In the non-UEFA organized Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, English clubs provided four winners and four runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with six and three, respectively. In the newly created third-tier UEFA Conference League, English clubs have a joint-record one title so far. In the former fourth-tier UEFA Intertoto Cup, England won four titles and had a further final appearance, placing it fifth in the rankings, although English clubs were notorious for treating the tournament with disdain, either sending "B" squads or withdrawing from it altogether. In the one-off UEFA Super Cup, England has ten winners and ten runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with 17 and 15, respectively.
The 2010 UEFA Super Cup was the 35th UEFA Super Cup, between the reigning champions of the two club competitions organised by the European football governing body UEFA: the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League. It took place at the Stade Louis II in Monaco on 27 August 2010. It was contested by Inter Milan, who won the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League, and Atlético Madrid, who won the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League. Neither side had previously competed in the UEFA Super Cup. As part of a trial that started in the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League, two extra officials – one on each goal line – were used in this match.
Juventus Football Club first participated in a Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) competition in 1958. The first international cup in which the club took part since the advent of professionalism in Italy was the Central European Cup, an inter-association tournament where the Old Lady made its debut in 1929. That competition lasted from 1927 to 1940 and the club reached the semi-finals in five editions. From 1938 to the Torneio Internacional de Clubes Campeões in 1951, in which they gained the final, Juventus did not participate in any international championships. After the establishing of UEFA in 1954 and the creation of its first own club competitions since the following year, they have competed, as of 2022, in six out of the seven confederation tournaments. After its triumph in 1985 Intercontinental Cup, the club obtained its first world champion title and contemporaneously claimed the trophy at least once in each of then five international competitions, making the Turinese club the first and only one worldwide in reach that achievement, which was revalidated after winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup fourteen years later and remained in force until the first Europa Conference League final played in 2022.
The UEFA Plaque was a honorific award given by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to those clubs that had won, at least once, the title in each of the three major international competitions organised by that confederation, namely the European Champions Cup, the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup. It was officially established in late 1987 and its first award was given in the second half of the following year, with Italian Juventus being the club to be honoured. A second award was initially scheduled for the second half of 1992 in favour of Dutch side Ajax, but it was not conferred for unclarified reasons by the confederation after Spanish team Barcelona —who did not comply with the requirement imposed by UEFA— at the same time unsuccessfully applied to European football's governing body for such recognition, being subsequently discontinued.
The 2014 UEFA Europa League final was the final match of the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, the 43rd season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the fifth season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League. It was played at the Juventus Stadium in Turin, Italy on 14 May 2014, between Spanish side Sevilla and Portuguese side Benfica. Sevilla won the match 4–2 on penalties, following a 0–0 draw after extra time.
Italian football clubs have entered European association football competitions since the 1955–56 season, when Milan took part in European Cup competition. Nowadays, Italian football is the second force in Europe according to UEFA ranking, following the English league. Italian clubs have also entered worldwide inter-club competitions several times since the 1963 Intercontinental Cup.
