If you were to ask any Chelsea or Spurs fan about their excitement for getting through to the quarter-finals of the Europa League, you'd likely be met with a grunting noise. The two London sides are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the Europa League is silverware - which, as Arsene Wenger knows all too well, is very important to the fans - but on the other, the number of games that need to be played just to win a second-string competition threatens domestic league form. If a team got all the way to the final, they'd have to play as many as 15 games more than their league rivals - crucially leaving key players prone to injury and fatigue, and making it far more difficult to qualify for the Champions League. UEFA knows as well as anyone what needs to happen: winning the Europa League needs to be considered more important than domestic league form. But what needs to change to make this happen?
Money, Money, Money
The first suggestion is simple: money talks. Currently, the winner of the Europa League gets 5million Euros. Compare that to merely qualifying for the Champions League group stages, however - where the club pockets a cool 8.6million, plus 1million per group stage win - and you can see why form in the national league is prioritised. If you can increase the prize money for progression to later stages, you'll incentivise clubs to play their strongest teams in Europe, rather than consider it a curse. Sadly, it's not as easy as that. After all, where does this additional money come from? Prizes are currently taken from cash raised by television deals, which are unlikely to increase enough to cover the cost of competing with the global brand that is the Champions League. The problem becomes circular: the TV channels won't pay more for the rights while the competition is considered unimportant, but the competition won't be considered any more important if the TV channels continue to pay what they do now. UEFA could potentially break this circle by using the strength of the Champions League to their advantage - that is, by giving the winner of the Europa League a spot in the next season's CL group stages (or at least the qualifying stages). Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change the attitude of clubs in situations similar to Benfica, who join Chelsea and Tottenham in the last eight. The Portuguese side, who are 19 points clear of slipping out of the Champions League places with eight games to go, are fighting a battle with FC Porto for the domestic title. In Portugal, fixture congestion isn't so much of a problem - they only play 30 games a season in their league - but with eight more games played each season in La Liga, the Premier League, and Serie A, it's not an ignorable issue. Additionally, it's difficult to justify the idea that a single Champions League spot will raise TV revenues by all that much.