Roma - Europa Conference/Fairs Cup

[overlap]

Reading a lot of reports this morning referring to Roma's win in the Europa Conference as being "their first major European trophy".
I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I would consider their winning of the Fairs Cup in 1961 as a major trophy.
It was a big thing for the English clubs who won it back in the day - Arsenal, Leeds, and Newcastle - and Barcelona have always been proud of their wins.
It was also the precursor to what is now (via the Uefa Cup) the Europa League.
It smacks of the same modern attitude which says English football only began with the Premier League in 1992....or maybe I am just getting old!

[seand]

Definitely.... there's a clear lineage between the Inter-City Fairs Cup, later called the Fairs Cup and the UEFA Cup - Europa League. The Fairs Cup was not run by UEFA, as such it's not considered an 'official' European competition by some, but it's clearly the same competition.
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[Bokbag]

Yeah just to follow up, the Fairs Cup is clearly a major trophy and a forerunner of the UEFA Cup. It will likely come from FIFA not recognising it anymore, I have no idea why it contained very good teams and wasn’t a knock about!

[foxes1]

Europa conference league was a basically a competition for teams that drop out of the higher up European competitions. I mean the team we knocked out in the quarter-finals PSV were in the Champions league to start with, they then dropped down to the Europa lge and ended up in the Europa conference league, thats why some of the bigger European clubs were in it.
My team Leicester dropped out of the Europa lge because basically we weren't good enough, but then again I would have liked us to have won it but it was not to be. Although I did enjoy travelling around Europe to places I probably wouldn't have gone to any way like Randers, Rennes, Eindhoven and Rome.

[Tynie Topics]

foxes1 wrote:

Europa conference league was a basically a competition for teams that drop out of the higher up European competitions.

There are some that drop into it, but for many smaller nations that is the primary competition after the Champions League. Dundee United and Motherwell go straight into the Conference League, as do Derry City, Sligo Rovers, St.Patricks Athletic, Crusaders, Cliftonville, Larne, Bala Town, Newtown next season.

They won't win it, but it's basicallly what the UEFA Cup was for smaller nations.

West Ham, Villareal, Fiorentina, Cologne etc. also enter directly.

That said, it's ridiculous you can drop out of the CL, then EL and end up in the Conference League.
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