IT’S time for the Europa League draw, with the Knockout playoff rounds to be set! The ties will be played on the 13th and 20th of February.
Manchester United or Tottenham will play Az Alkmaar or Galatasary, and Midjtylland or Real Sociedad- with those ties to be drawn later in February!
Well that was a rush! Thank you to those of you tuning into the live-blog! Keep up to date with the latest news across the busy sporting day!
UEFA have updated their bracket!
Confirmation that the ties are the 13th and 20th of February, although those ties could change due to stadium clashes!
Fenerbahce vs Anderlecht
Twente vs Bodo / Glimt
PAOK vs FCSB
USG vs Ajax
Midtjylland vs Real Sociedad
AZ Alkmaar vs Galatasaray
Porto vs Roma
Ferencvaros vs Viktoria Plzen
We have to split the seeded and unseeded teams into the left or right side to start with!
We are go!
The explanation of the format has taken longer than 8 minutes, more than the actual drawing action that we saw this morning!
No tweets to our socials about lunch…..
The draw is now being explained, luckily the Champions League follows an identical format, so we are match ready to go!
He is the 2025 Europa League Final Ambassador! He was asked what he thinks about the new format, but has started speaking Spanish . I’ll keep you posted, as I don’t think the GCSE curriculum teaches you the nuances of football logistics……
Aritz Aduriz!
The special guest for the Europa League draw us out, a former Athletic Bilbao striker, can you guess?
Giorgio Marchetti is out, do you reckon that he is cryogenically unfrozen for these draws?
Still just showing highlights, I might Deliveroo some lunch to the newsroom, what should I get? Tag us on @SolentSportsNews on social media to say what I should get, I’m thinking Mexican.
This mix of already agreed seeding and random draws is confusing a lot of people, myself included.
The British clubs will find out the ties of who they potentially could face, with the draw of who they will face taking place after these have been completed.
‘Let’s take a closer look’. No. I want to know who teams are playing!
The broadcast is live! Pedro Pinto, UEFA host, is on screen.
This draw is somewhat inconsequential for the British clubs, with Manchester United, Tottenham and Rangers all qualifying in the top eight!
Welcome to the second live blog of the day, as we tick over into the afternoon, we have some thrilling action ahead, 20 minutes of UEFA corporate dross and goal compilations!
