Friday's draw (29 August) takes place in
Nyon, Switzerland and is scheduled to
begin at 12.00pm. A live stream will
be available through Uefa's official
website.

Overview

The Europa League's reputation is often
derided by supporters and overlooked
by managers when considered in the
grand scheme of a club's season.
Away trips to the furthest corners of the
continent in the group stages and
inconvenient Thursday night games that
threaten to disrupt the rhythm of a
domestic campaign have seen the
competition overlooked by many in the
past but this season's edition is
different.

The move to ensure the winners of the
2015 Europa League qualify for next
season's Champions League regardless
of their domestic finish has boosted
interest in the competition significantly.
How will this affect teams pining for
European glory? Ambition to succeed on
the continent will by justly awarded for
starters. In both of their triumphs in
2010 and 2012, Atletico Madrid failed to
finish in the top four in Spain, finishing
9th (2010) and 5th (2012) as they failed
to maintain a balance between
European and domestic commitments.
Their prize for such successes was
another go in the same competition.
Surely that success was deserving of
something better? The guarantee of
Champions League football for this
year's winner could drastically change
the perception of where the competition
lies in a team's priorities. The expected
is upshot is a better standard of football
among a better quality of teams. That
can't be a bad thing, can it?

Format

Forty-eight teams enter Friday's group
stage draw: teams who automatically
qualified last season, the play-off
winners and the ten losing teams from
the Uefa Champions League play-offs.
The 48 teams are split into four seeding
pots based on UEFA's coefficient
system, with one from each drawn into
the 12 groups. No side can meet another
from the same league.

Europa League group stage draw
pots

Pot 1: Sevilla, Inter, Spurs, PSV,
Napoli, D Kiev, Villarreal, Fiorentina,
Salzburg, Metalist, Lille, Copenhagen.

Pot 2: Steaua, Liege, PAOK, Celtic,
Besiktas, Wolfsburg, Brugge, Dnipro,
Trabzonspor, Panathinaikos, Sparta,
Gladbach

Pot 3: Everton, Y Boys, D Zagreb,
Zurich, Estoril, Legia, Partizan, Torino,
Feyenoord, Guingamp, St Etienne, Rio
Ave or D Moscow

Pot 4: D Moscow or Elfsborg,
Krasnodar, Rijeka, Lokeren, Asteras,
Slovan Bratislava, Apollon, Qarabag,
HJK, Dinamo Minsk, Aab, Astana

Note: Update will be posted on this thread!

Moderator should kindly move this thread to FP so that we can get updates! The draw starts now.