| Tourney Name: | UEFA Europa League |
| Year: | 2014–15 |
| Size: | 275px |
| Dates: | Qualifying: 1 July – 28 August 2014 Competition proper: 18 September 2014 – 27 May 2015 |
| Num Teams: | Competition proper: 48+8 Total: 162+33 |
| Associations: | 54 |
| Champion Other: | Sevilla |
| Count: | 4 |
| Second Other: | Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk |
| Matches: | 205 |
| Goals: | 548 |
| Top Scorer: | Alan (Red Bull Salzburg) Romelu Lukaku (Everton) 8 goals each |
| Prevseason: | 2013–14 |
| Nextseason: | 2015–16 |
The 2014–15 UEFA Europa League was the 44th season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the sixth season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League.
The 2015 UEFA Europa League Final was played at the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland,[1] with Spanish side and title holders Sevilla defeating Ukrainian side Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk 3–2 to win a record fourth title.[2]
This season was the first where clubs must comply with UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations in order to participate.[3] Moreover, this season was the first where a club from Gibraltar competed in the tournament, after the Gibraltar Football Association was accepted as the 54th UEFA member at the UEFA Congress in May 2013.[4] They were granted one spot in the Europa League,[5] which was taken by College Europa, the runners-up of the 2014 Rock Cup.
Starting from this edition, the UEFA Europa League winners automatically qualify for the subsequent UEFA Champions League season even if they do not qualify for the Champions League through their domestic performance.[6] Therefore, the winners of this tournament qualify for the 2015–16 UEFA Champions League. They are guaranteed to enter at least the play-off round, and since the group stage berth reserved for the Champions League title holders will not be used (the winners of the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League are guaranteed to qualify for the group stage through domestic performance), they will be elevated to enter the group stage via this berth.[7]
On 17 July 2014, the UEFA emergency panel ruled that Ukrainian and Russian clubs would not be drawn against each other "until further notice" due to the political unrest between the countries.[8] Another ruling centred in regional instability was also made where Israeli teams were prohibited from hosting any UEFA competitions due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict (whilst the ruling ended a short time after the war, all the country's sides were eliminated before it ended).[9] The rules regarding suspension due to yellow card accumulation were also changed such that all bookings expired on completion of the quarter-finals and were not carried forward to the semi-finals.[10] Moreover, this was the first season in which vanishing spray was used.[11]
A total of 195 teams from all 54 UEFA member associations participate in the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League. The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:[12]
The winners of the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League are given an additional entry as title holders if they do not qualify for the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League or Europa League through their domestic performance. However, this additional entry is not necessary for this season since the title holders qualified for European competitions through their domestic performance.
For the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2013 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2008–09 to 2012–13.[13] [14]
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Europa League, as noted below:
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Since title holders Sevilla qualified for the Europa League through their domestic performance, the spot which they qualified for in the group stage (as the fifth-placed team of the 2013–14 La Liga) is vacated, and the following changes to the default allocation system were made:[16] [17] [18]
| Teams entering in this round | Teams advancing from previous round | Teams transferred from Champions League | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First qualifying round (78 teams) |
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| Second qualifying round (80 teams) |
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| Third qualifying round (58 teams) |
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| Play-off round (62 teams) |
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| Group stage (48 teams) |
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| Knockout phase (32 teams) |
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A Europa League place is vacated when a team qualifies for both the Champions League and the Europa League, or qualifies for the Europa League by more than one method. When a place is vacated, it is redistributed within the national association by the following rules:[12]
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:[19] [20] [21]
| Round of 32 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Group stage | |||
| SevillaTH | |||
| Play-off round | |||
| Third qualifying round | |||
| Second qualifying round | |||
| First qualifying round | |||
| Tromsø [22] | |||
| IF Brommapojkarna [23] | |||
| MYPA [24] | |||
Notably three teams take part in the competition that do not currently play in their national top-division. They are Santos Tartu (3rd tier), St. Pölten (2nd) and Tromsø (2nd).
The schedule of the competition is as follows (all draws held at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, unless stated otherwise).[16] [25]
| Phase | Round | Draw date | First leg | Second leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying | First qualifying round | 23 June 2014 | 3 July 2014 | 10 July 2014 |
| Second qualifying round | 17 July 2014 | 24 July 2014 | ||
| Third qualifying round | 18 July 2014 | 31 July 2014 | 7 August 2014 | |
| Play-off | Play-off round | 8 August 2014 | 21 August 2014 | 28 August 2014 |
| Group stage | Matchday 1 | 29 August 2014 (Monaco) | 18 September 2014 | |
| Matchday 2 | 2 October 2014 | |||
| Matchday 3 | 23 October 2014 | |||
| Matchday 4 | 6 November 2014 | |||
| Matchday 5 | 27 November 2014 | |||
| Matchday 6 | 11 December 2014 | |||
| Knockout phase | Round of 32 | 15 December 2014 | 19 February 2015 | 26 February 2015 |
| Round of 16 | 27 February 2015[26] | 12 March 2015 | 19 March 2015 | |
| Quarter-finals | 20 March 2015 | 16 April 2015 | 23 April 2015 | |
| Semi-finals | 24 April 2015 | 7 May 2015 | 14 May 2015 | |
| Final | 27 May 2015 at National Stadium, Warsaw | |||
Matches in the qualifying, play-off, and knockout rounds may also be played on Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead of the regular Thursdays due to scheduling conflicts.
See main article: 2014–15 UEFA Europa League qualifying phase.
In the qualifying rounds and the play-off round, teams were divided into seeded and unseeded teams based on their 2014 UEFA club coefficients,[27] [28] [29] and then drawn into two-legged home-and-away ties. Teams from the same association could not be drawn against each other.
The draw for the first and second qualifying rounds was held on 23 June 2014.[30]
The draw for the third qualifying round was held on 18 July 2014.[31]
The draw for the play-off round was held on 8 August 2014.[32]
See main article: 2014–15 UEFA Europa League group stage.
The draw for the group stage was held in Monaco on 29 August 2014.[33] The 48 teams were allocated into four pots based on their 2014 UEFA club coefficients,[27] [28] [29] with the title holders being placed in Pot 1 automatically.[34] They were drawn into twelve groups of four, with the restriction that teams from the same association could not be drawn against each other.
In each group, teams played against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The matchdays were 18 September, 2 October, 23 October (one home match of Metalist Kharkiv played on 22 October), 6 November, 27 November, and 11 December 2014.
A total of 26 national associations were represented in the group stage. VfL Wolfsburg, Torino, Feyenoord, Guingamp, Saint-Étienne, Rio Ave, Dynamo Moscow, Krasnodar, Lokeren, Asteras Tripolis, Qarabağ, HJK, Astra Giurgiu, Dinamo Minsk and AaB made their debut appearances in the UEFA Europa League group stage (not counting UEFA Cup group stage appearances), although VfL Wolfsburg had already competed in the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League knockout phase after a third place in the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League group stage.
The group winners and runners-up advanced to the round of 32, where they were joined by the eight third-placed teams of the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League group stage. See 2014–15 UEFA Europa League group stage#Tiebreakers for tiebreakers if two or more teams are equal on points.
Red Bull Salzburg's 21 goals scored set a new Europa League group stage record.[35]
See main article: 2014–15 UEFA Europa League knockout phase.
In the knockout phase, teams played against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final. The mechanism of the draws for each round was as follows:
Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and play-off round.
| Rank | Player | Team | Goals | Minutes played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alan | Red Bull Salzburg | 8 | 423 |
| Romelu Lukaku | Everton | 634 | ||
| 3 | Carlos Bacca | Sevilla | 7 | 765 |
| Gonzalo Higuaín | Napoli | 833 | ||
| 5 | Stefanos Athanasiadis | PAOK | 6 | 516 |
| Guillaume Hoarau | Young Boys | 605 | ||
| Jonathan Soriano | Red Bull Salzburg | 613 | ||
| Luciano Vietto | Villarreal | 732 | ||
| Lior Refaelov | Club Brugge | 789 | ||
| 10 | Raul Rusescu | Steaua București | 5 | 147 |
| Harry Kane | Tottenham Hotspur | 422 | ||
| David Lafata | Sparta Prague | 440 | ||
| Andrej Kramarić | Rijeka | 505 | ||
| Claudio Beauvue | Guingamp | 720 | ||
| Demba Ba | Beşiktaş | 729 | ||
| Kevin De Bruyne | VfL Wolfsburg | 981 |
| Rank | Player | Team | Assists | Minutes played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luciano Vietto | Villarreal | 6 | 732 |
| Andriy Yarmolenko | Dynamo Kyiv | 6 | 933 | |
| 3 | Colin Kazim-Richards | Feyenoord | 5 | 560 |
| Kevin De Bruyne | VfL Wolfsburg | 5 | 981 | |
| 5 | Vasilis Torosidis | Roma | 4 | 297 |
| Leighton Baines | Everton | 4 | 450 | |
| Alexandru Chipciu | Steaua București | 4 | 450 | |
| Kevin Kampl | Red Bull Salzburg | 4 | 540 | |
| Lior Refaelov | Club Brugge | 4 | 789 | |
| Gökhan Töre | Beşiktaş | 4 | 886 |
The UEFA technical study group selected the following 18 players as the squad of the tournament:[38]