Gary lineker, alan shearer, and micah richards, three football pundits, unanimously selected liverpool as the frontrunners for the europa league title in a recent episode of the rest is football podcast.
This week, the group stage of uefa’s competitions concluded, revealing the complete list of squads that will qualify for the europa league knockout phase. Despite liverpool’s last group match being insignificant because it had already clinched group e, the 2-1 loss to union sg did not dampen the pundits’ optimism. For this match, jürgen klopp had chosen a less experienced team, which has a modestly tarnished record of four victories and two losses so far in the tournament.
lineker started a discussion about the progression of english teams to the next level in the podcast. “liverpool look solid with the squad they have, with the knowledge they have,” shearer said. Liverpoolrichards echoed this sentiment, claiming that they will be one of the favorites and expect to win it all the time. Lineker ended the discussion with a joke: “well, that’s the europa league sorted,” liverpool’s manager claims. “liverpool has qualified for the round of 16 as a group winner,” the club announced.
It also allows it to skip the two-legged play-off round and face potential champions league opponents. Bayer leverkusen of xabi alonso is one of the other teams to enjoy this privilege, remaining unbeaten in the competition, as well as atalanta, brighton, rangers, slavia praha, villarreal, and west ham.
Sc freiburg, marseille, qarabag, rennes, as roma, sparta praha, sporting cp, and toulouse are among the teams in the play-offs who qualify for the europa league runners-up positions. The play-offs will also feature teams from the champions league’s third-placed teams, such as benfica, braga, feyenoord, galatasaray, rc lens, milan, and young boys.
