Europa Conference League qualification explained: Aston Villa’s path to group stage and potential rivals

Aston Villa are already preparing for the new season, and an exciting European campaig may lay in wait.

Unai Emery is renowned for being a specialist in UEFA competitions, and he will be hoping to lead Villa to European success after securing qualification to the Conference League’s final qualification round. Villa still have work to do to make the competition’s group stage, but they will be fancied to make the main competition as they continue to strengthen a mouth-watering squad.

Here we take you through the ins and outs of the Europa Conference League qualification to see what Villa can expect.

How the qualification works

The way the Europa Conference League works, there are no guaranteed places in the group stage. It is unlike the Europa League and the Champions League in that regard, with a number of teams securing guaranteed qualification through their finishes in their respective domestic leagues in those competitions.

In the Conference League, teams who finish in a Conference League spot in the top leagues gain an advantage by enterring the competition at the play-off round, which is the fourth and final stage of qualification. Five teams are given that privilege, while five teams who exit the Champions League third round qualifiers also drop into the Conference League playoffs, along with two teams who lose the Europa League third round qualifiers.

The first round qualifiers are made up of 62 teams who finished in the Conference League positions in the lowest-seeded leagues, while 75 more teams join in the second round of qualifying, with 62 enterring through domestic league qualification, while 13 teams who lose in the first round of Champions League qualifying also join.

In the third round of qualifying, the 53 teams who advance are joined by 11 more teams who enter at this stage, with nine teams qualifying through league position - including Scottish club Hearts - whole two more losers of the Champions League qualifying first round also join. Ahead of qualifying round, the losers of the Champions League qualifying first round are seeded, with the best two teams enterring one round later than the rest.

Finally, the Conference Leaugue qualifying play-off round sees the 32 remaining teams joined by the five teams who qualified from the top leagues, along with two of the Europa League qualifying round three losers, along with five of the Champions League qualifying round three losers. That makes 12 more entries at this stage, with 22 teams progressing to the final group stage.

Those qualifying teams will also be joined by 10 teams who lose during the final stage of Europa League qualifying - the qualifying play-off round - rounding the number up to the final 32.

Teams involved in the playoffs

To save an endless list of hundreds of teams, we will include the teams who have already qualified for the last two stages of the qualifiers below.

Third qualifying round: Arouca, AZ, Rapid Wien, Hearts, Partizan, Dynamo Kiev, Brann, Nordsjaelland, Hajduk Split, UCL Q1 loser 1, UCL Q1 loser 2.

Qualifying playoff round: Aston Villa, Athletic Club, Juventus, Eintrach Frankfurt, Lille, 5 losers of UCL Q3, 2 losers of EL Q3.

Villa’s path to the group stage

Quite simply, Villa will only need to win one two-legged tie to secure qualification for the group stage, given they enter at the qualifying playoff stage.

Villa will discover their playoff opponent on August 7, when the draw is made, while the first and second legs will be played across August 24 and August 31. If Villa are successful, they will then discover their group stage opponents on September 1, with the group stage starting on September 21.

It’s important to note that the group stage draw will be seeded, but we won’t know which seeds each team will receive until we know the full list of teams, The calculation is done by list all of the qualified teams in order of their UEFA coefficient points, which is calculated with each team’s European performance over the last five years.

Luckily for Villa, UEFA take each club’s coefficient points or a percentage of their country’s coefficient points total, whichever is higher. That will help Villa rank higher given they do not have any UEFA coefficient points based on their own European performance over the last five years.