Europa League Group Stage Draw: Date, Time, How to Watch & Qualified Teams | OneFootball

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Football Today

·29 September 2020

Europa League Group Stage Draw: Date, Time, How to Watch & Qualified Teams

Article image:Europa League Group Stage Draw: Date, Time, How to Watch & Qualified Teams

The 2020/21 Europa League will get underway during October in what will be the 50th season of UEFA’s secondary club football competition.

Sevilla won the tournament last time around, securing a 3-2 victory over Inter Milan to claim the trophy for the sixth time in their history.


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Both those teams will compete in the Champions League this term, but they could drop into the Europa League at the round of 32 stage if they fail to make progress in that competition.

Premier League clubs Leicester City and Arsenal have qualified directly to the Europa League group stage, while Tottenham Hotspur must overcome Maccabi Haifa if they are to join them there.

Celtic and Rangers could also qualify for the group stage, providing they can defeat Sarajevo and Galatasaray in their respective play-off fixtures.

Napoli, Benfica and Bayer Leverkusen are amongst the big European teams who will expect to progress to the latter stages of the Europa League.

Europa League Draw: Date and Time

The group stage draw will take place on Friday, October 2, and will begin at 12.00pm UK time. It will be held at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland.

The 48 teams are drawn into 12 groups of four, with the restriction that teams from the same national association cannot be drawn against each other.

Europa League Draw: TV Channel and Live Stream

BT Sport own the exclusive rights to broadcasting the Europa League live in the United Kingdom and will be screening the entire draw.

UEFA will also be providing a free live stream on their official website, while there are plenty of other online streaming sites that will have coverage of the draw.

Europa League Draw: Teams Involved

There are currently 21 teams who have booked their place in this season’s Europa League:

Arsenal Roma Napoli Benfica Bayer Leverkusen Villarreal CSKA Moscow Sporting Braga Sparta Prague Rapid Wien Leicester City Real Sociedad AZ Alkmaar Feyenoord Hoffenheim Zorya Luhansk Lille Nice Royal Antwerp Sivasspor Wolfsberger

Further preliminary games will determine which other 27 teams compete in the group stage. Basel, AC Milan, PSV Eindhoven, Sporting Lisbon and Wolfsburg are amongst the clubs who are strongly fancied to progress to the next phase.

Europa League 2020/21 Group Stage Schedule

Matchday 1 – October 22 Matchday 2 – October 29 Matchday 3 – November 5 Matchday 4 – November 26 Matchday 5 – December 3 Matchday 6 – December 10

Europa League 2020/21 Preview

Predicting which team will win the Europa League is a tough task, with the group stage not always producing the eventual winner of the competition.

Eight teams drop into the tournament from the Champions League for the round of 32, adding an extra dimension to UEFA’s secondary competition.

However, Arsenal can be expected to give punters a good run for their money, having shown plenty of improvement under manager Mikel Arteta.

Spurs are also worth considering if they can reach the group stage, particularly given Jose Mourinho’s previous success in European competitions with other clubs.

While the Premier League pair will be popular with many ante-post punters, it can often pay to be patient when betting on the outright winner in the Europa League.

Three of the last eight winners of the competition started their European campaign in the Champions League, highlighting the difficulties that bettors face prior to the group stage.

At the current odds, Napoli are perhaps the value bet having performed well in last season’s Champions League.

They were unbeaten during the group phase, before slipping to a 4-2 aggregate defeat against Barcelona in the round of 16.

The slightly calmer waters of the Europa League should be more to their liking and the Serie A club are fancied to have a good run in the competition.

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