European football governing body, UEFA has reduced the name of its third-tier competition from “Europa Conference League” to “Conference League” ahead of the 2024-25 season.
INFORMATION NIGERIA reports that the 2024 and 2025 finals will be held in Athens and Wroclaw respectively, while Lisbon will host the 2025 Women’s Champions League final at Sporting’s Estadio Jose Alvalade.
The new Agia Sofia Stadium, home of AEK Athens, will be observed by UEFA officials until this November before confirming the 2024 final there.
In a statement shared on Wednesday, UEFA said: “Introduced under the ‘Europa’ umbrella at the start of the 2021–24 commercial cycle, the new competition has quickly established itself amongst a broad audience after two successful seasons.
“Research amongst fans as well as commercial partners has found that removing “Europa” from the name of the competition will enable further development as a stand-alone competition and this proposed change was approved by the UEFA Executive Committee. It will be effective in the new cycle, as of the 2024/25 season.
“Together with the UEFA Europa League, the UEFA Conference League will continue to deliver “Thursday Night Football” to fans across Europe and beyond.
“A strong link between the competitions will remain in place as both brand identities will remain very close, and both competitions will continue to be sold to broadcast partners and sponsors together.”
Recall that the competition was established in 2021, when Jose Mourinho’s Roma were the inaugural winners of the European tournament, which aims to give teams another route into Europa League qualification, as well as silverware and prestige.
Mourinho placed value in becoming the first manager to win all three European competitions, he had the three trophies of the Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League inked on his bicep to commemorate the feat.
This year, West Ham won the trophy after beating Fiorentina 2-1 in Prague in a win that saw the Hammers clinch their first major trophy in over 40 years.
