The 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Europa League was the 43rd season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the fifth season under its current title.
The final was played between Sevilla and Benfica at the Juventus Stadium in Turin, Italy, which was won by Sevilla on penalties, giving them a record-equalling third UEFA Cup/Europa League title. Chelsea could not defend their title as they automatically qualified for the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Champions League and also reached the knockout stage.
A total of 194 teams from 53 of the 54 UEFA member associations participated in the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Europa League (the exception being Gibraltar, which started participating in the 2014âÂÂ15 season after being admitted as a UEFA member in May 2013). The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
The winners of the 2012âÂÂ13 UEFA Europa League were given an additional entry as title holders if they did not qualify for the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Champions League or Europa League through their domestic performance. However, this additional entry was not necessary for this season, because the title holders qualified for European competitions through their domestic performance.
For the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Europa League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2012 UEFA country coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2007âÂÂ08 to 2011âÂÂ12.
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations may have additional teams participating in the Europa League, as noted below:
Since the title holders (Chelsea) qualified for the Champions League through their domestic performance, the group stage spot reserved for the title holders was vacated, and the following changes to the default allocation system were made:
A Europa League place was vacated when a team qualified for both the Champions League and the Europa League, or qualified for the Europa League by more than one method. When a place was vacated, it was redistributed within the national association by the following rules:
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
Notably six teams that did not play in their national top-division took part in the competition. They were: Hapoel Ramat Gan (2nd tier), Hødd (2nd), Pasching (3rd), Teteks (2nd), Vaduz (2nd) and Wigan Athletic (2nd).
The schedule of the competition was as follows (all draws held at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, unless stated otherwise).
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.
In the qualifying rounds and the play-off round, teams were divided into seeded and unseeded teams based on their 2013 UEFA club coefficients, and then drawn into two-legged home-and-away ties. Teams from the same association could not be drawn against each other.
The draws for the first and second qualifying rounds were held on 24 June 2013.
The draw for the third qualifying round was held on 19 July 2013.
The draw for the play-off round was held on 9 August 2013.
The draw for the group stage was held in Monaco on 30 August 2013. Prior to the draw, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld UEFA's ban on Fenerbahce (which lost in the Champions League play-off round) and Beà Âiktaà Â, meaning the two clubs were banned from the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Europa League. UEFA decided to replace Beà Âiktaà  in the Europa League group stage with Tromsø, who were eliminated by Beà Âiktaà  in the play-off round, while a draw was held to select a team to replace Fenerbahçe among the teams eliminated in the play-off round, and was won by APOEL.
The 48 teams were allocated into four pots based on their 2013 UEFA club coefficients. 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 19 September, 3 October, 24 October, 7 November, 28 November, and 12 December 2013. The group winners and runners-up advanced to the round of 32, where they were joined by the 8 third-placed teams from the 2013âÂÂ14 UEFA Champions League group stage.
A total of 27 associations were represented in the group stage. This was also the first time a team from Kazakhstan qualified for group stage. Swansea City, Kuban Krasnodar, Sankt Gallen, Ludogorets, Chornomorets Odesa, Esbjerg, Elfsborg, Zulte Waregem, Wigan Athletic, Paços de Ferreira, Pandurii Târgu Jiu, Eintracht Frankfurt, APOEL, Thun, Slovan Liberec, SC Freiburg, Estoril, Real Betis, Vitória de Guimarães, Rijeka, Trabzonspor, Apollon Limassol, Tromsø and Shakhter Karagandy all made their debut in UEFA Europa League group stage (although Elfsborg, Zulte Waregem, Eintracht Frankfurt, Slovan Liberec, Vitória de Guimarães and Tromsø played already in UEFA Cup as well as Thun, Real Betis, Trabzonspor already disputed the UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League knockout stage).
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.
The UEFA technical study group selected the following 18 players as the squad of the tournament: