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The UEFA Europa League evolved from the UEFA Cup, which itself was conceived by Switzerland's Ernst Thommen who, along with Italy's Ottorino Barrasi and England's Sir Stanley Rous, later FIFA President, created a tournament for representative sides from European cities that regularly held trade fairs.

Forerunner
This forerunner to the UEFA Cup, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, was founded on 18 April 1955, two weeks after the founding of the European Champion Clubs' Cup. The first Fairs Cup involved teams from Barcelona, Basle, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Leipzig, London, Milan and Zagreb. The original tournament lasted three years, with matches timed to coincide with trade fairs. Barcelona, using players purely from FC Barcelona, beat a London representative side 8-2 on aggregate in the final.

Club involvement
For the second tournament the organisers reverted to club participation but the teams still had to come from cities staging trade fairs. Sixteen clubs took part in the 1958-60 tournament, after which it was staged on an annual basis. By 1962 the number of entrants had risen to 32; there are now over 100. In its early years, teams from southern Europe dominated, notably Barcelona, who won it three times, and Valencia CF who won it twice. In 1968 Leeds United AFC became the first northern European club to win the trophy, heralding a run of six successive wins by English sides.

Name change
The fifth of these was in 1971/72, won by Tottenham Hotspur FC, and the first to be known as the UEFA Cup. The change of name was recognition of the fact the competition was now run by UEFA and no longer associated with the trade fairs. During the 1970s German, Dutch, Belgian and Swedish sides began to successfully compete with the English and between 1968 and 1984 only one team from the south – Juventus in 1977 – managed to disrupt the dominance of the northern Europeans.

Italian success
But following back-to-back victories by Real Madrid CF in the mid-1980s, Italian clubs took control in the 1990s. Starting with SSC Napoli's victory in 1989, Italian sides won the UEFA Cup eight times in eleven seasons, with FC Internazionale Milano winning it three times, before Galatasaray AŞ claimed it as Turkey's first European club prize in 2000. With the exception of 1964 and 1965, the final had, like the previous rounds, always been a two-legged, affair. The format changed permanently to a one-tie final in 1998 when Inter beat S.S. Lazio 3-0 at the Parc des Princes in Paris. Inter, Juventus and Liverpool share the record of three UEFA Cup final successes apiece.

Competitions merge
From 1999/00, domestic cup winners also qualified for the UEFA Cup after the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was disbanded. In addition, clubs eliminated from the third qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League and the eight third-placed finishers at the end of the group stage of the same competition entered the competition. A group stage was introduced for the first time in 2004/05 involving 40 teams playing four games.

UEFA Europa League
On 26 September 2008, the UEFA Executive Committee decided that from 2009/10 the competition would become the UEFA Europa League. This reflected a change to the format previously agreed, with the group stage expanding to 48 clubs, who would play six matches on a home-and-away format similar to the UEFA Champions League.

Bertoni trophy
The trophy itself, which weighs 15kg and is silver on a yellow marble plinth, was designed and crafted by the Bertoni workshops in Milan for the 1972 final. It has no handles, its beauty lying in its simplicity. Just above the plinth, a group of players seem to be jostling for the ball. In fact they are supporting the octagonal cup which is emblazoned with the UEFA emblem.

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• The group stage is expanded to include 12 groups of four teams each. Each team plays the other three sides on a home-and-away basis, with the top two teams in each of the 12 groups progressing to the Round of 32.

• Ten clubs eliminated from the UEFA Champions League play-off round qualify automatically for the group stage.

• Qualifying for the UEFA Europa League consists of four rounds, with the first involving a total of 46 teams. These are drawn from the domestic cup winners from the associations ranked 37 to 51 (except Liechtenstein) in the UEFA coefficient ranking, plus the domestic league runners-up from the associations ranked 37 to 51 (except Liechtenstein), the third-placed side from the associations ranked 22 to 51 (except Liechtenstein) and the three UEFA Fair Play winners enter the competition in the first qualifying round, which consists of two legs played on a home-and-away basis.

• The winners of those 23 ties are joined in the second qualifying round by a further 57 clubs: the domestic cup winners from the associations ranked 30 to 53 in the UEFA coefficient, the runners-up from the associations ranked 19 to 34, the third-placed sides from the associations ranked 16 to 21, the fourth-placed sides from the associations ranked 10 to 15 and the fifth-placed sides from the associations ranked 7 to 9. These ties are also played over two legs, home and away.

• The victorious sides from those 40 ties progress to the third qualifying round, where they are joined by a further 30 clubs: the domestic cup winners from the associations ranked 18 to 29, the domestic league runners-up from the associations ranked 16 to 18, the third-placed league side from the associations ranked 10 to 15, the fourth-placed side from the associations ranked 7 to 9, the fifth-placed side from the association ranked 4 to 6 and the sixth-placed side from the associations ranked 1 to 3. Again, these two legs are played home and away.

• The winners of these 35 ties are joined in the play-off round by another 41 clubs; the 15 losing teams from the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round, the domestic cup winners from the associations ranked 1 to 17, the third-placed league sides from the associations ranked 7 to 9, the fourth-placed team from the associations ranked 4 to 6 and the fifth-placed teams from the associations ranked 1 to 3.

• The 38 victorious sides from these two legs qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage, and will be joined there by the ten losing sides from the UEFA Champions League play-off round.

• The losing finalist for the domestic cup competition will still be entitled to be entered for the UEFA Europa League should the domestic cup winners qualify for the UEFA Champions League.

• The UEFA Europa League Round of 32 includes the top two teams from each of the 12 groups, plus the eight teams who finish in third position in their UEFA Champions League group. The winners of these 16 ties progress to the Round of 16, then the quarter-finals and subsequently the semi-finals.

• The final will be played on a Wednesday night in a single match at a neutral venue, kick-off 20.45CET.

• UEFA Europa League matches will be played on Thursday night in a week where there are UEFA Champions League matches, and on Wednesday and Thursday nights during weeks that are exclusive to the UEFA Europa League. There will be two kick-off times, in principle at 19.00 and 21.05CET according to local situations.

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Falkirk FC (SCO) v FC Vaduz (LIE)