(On Soccer)
AMSTERDAM— Over the course of the past year, Remco Ravenhorst has followed his team from his home an hour north of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the shimmering shores of Lake Lucerne and the vast concrete of suburban Berlin.
Ravenhorst has watched his beloved Feyenoord play in the sleepy Swedish town of Boras and in the explosive hostility of Belgrade, Serbia. He has visited Prague twice. He traveled to Gnjilane, on the edge of Kosovo, knowing that pandemic regulations would not allow him to enter the stadium.
It has been, he admitted, a rather expensive venture that has depended heavily on his employer’s understanding, although he once decided against a trip to Israel after considering the two-week quarantine on arrival too much to ask. His commitment has been commendable, particularly considering that it has all been for a competition that even he considered a joke when it was created.
When UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, announced the details of its third continental tournament last summer, Ravenhorst was neither impressed nor moved. The event, the Europa League Conference, seemed to offer a cheap imitation of European soccer: all the games, but none of the history, meaning, glamor or appeal.
Europe’s major leagues saw the tournament as another burden, player organizations feared it would increase the risk of burnout, and fan groups complained it created yet another expense for those who wanted to follow their teams. Feyenoord’s first home game – against Kosovo’s Drita – seemed to confirm all the criticism. In bright sunshine, De Kuip, the club’s normally noisy stadium in Rotterdam, was barely half full.
Nine months later, however, Ravenhorst acknowledges with some embarrassment that his feelings have changed. He’s not the only one. Last week, when Feyenoord hosted Slavia Prague in the first match of the Europa Conference League quarterfinals — in which the Czech team secured a 3-3 draw with a 95th-minute goal — De Kuip was full.
“The perception completely changed,” Ravenhorst said. “Now there is a really positive energy. People know that we have a real shot at winning, and that gives you the feeling that you could have these types of games more often. It doesn’t always have to be the same four, five or six teams from the same four, five or six leagues.”
Before the debut of the Europa League Conference, that is precisely what European football had become. Since 2013, only three teams outside Europe’s main television markets — England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany — have qualified for the Champions League quarterfinals: two Portuguese teams, Benfica and Porto, and, in 2019, Feyenoord’s Dutch archrival Ajax.
The Europa League has traditionally been a bit more diverse, but in recent years it has also been increasingly vulnerable to the huge financial advantage enjoyed by Western European major league teams. Since 2018, only one club outside the top five leagues – Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk – has managed to qualify for the semi-finals.
“Currently there is very little room for teams outside the top 20 group on the continent to reach the knockout rounds of European competitions,” said Kyriakos Kyriakos, a member of the board of directors of Greek club PAOK Thessaloniki, which hosted Olympique de Marseille in the second leg of their quarterfinals on Thursday 14 April in Thessaloniki. “For the Greek teams, and for all of the mid-level championships in Europe, the Conference Europa League has provided that opportunity.”
The quarterfinal team lineup illustrates this perfectly. England, France and Italy were represented – with Leicester City, Olympique de Marseille and Roma – but so were the Czech Republic, Norway and Greece. The Dutch had two contenders: Feyenoord and PSV Eindhoven.
In an era in which the executives of the most powerful teams and the richest leagues compulsively promote the idea that the key to the growth of European football lies in guaranteeing the greatest number of matches between the continent’s superclubs, the Europa League Conference offers a different paradigm.
But perhaps the most important thing is that the teams themselves are motivated and interested in the tournament. Roma’s visit to Bodo/Glimt in the first leg of their quarter-final was marred by an altercation in the tunnel between a member of José Mourinho’s coaching staff and Kjetil Knutsen, the Norwegian club’s manager. El Bodo filed an appeal with UEFA when both were sanctioned for the fight.
Kyriakos, meanwhile, anticipated an “incredible night” at Tumba – PAOK’s dilapidated and bustling stadium, listed as one of the most intimidating in Europe – for the second leg with Marseille, despite the fact that the Greek team he arrived needing to win by two goals difference to secure his place in the semi-finals.
It was, he said, an “opportunity to achieve something monumental in the history of our club.” However, the fervor of the PAOK fans failed to carry the team forward: Olympique left the Tomb with a 1-0 victory.
No one involved cares that the Europa League Conference emerged, fully formed, from UEFA’s imagination just a year ago. Nobody perceives games as meaningless exhibitions anymore; How could they be, when they have come to mean so much? Nobody complains about the lack of history or glamor anymore.
“I’m not very objective on this subject,” Ravenhorst said last week as he prepared for his second trip to Prague this season, “but of course I like racing now.” His odyssey, like Feyenoord’s, shows no signs of ending any time soon. He now has to plan a trip to Marseille.