Jose Mourinho loved it, but perhaps not as much Aleksander Ceferin, for whom big manager tears will have tasted like fine wine in the Europa Conference League’s inaugural year.
Roma reached their first European final since 1991 on Thursday, as Tammy Abraham’s header secured a 2-1 aggregate win over Leicester in the Europa League Conference semi-final. It was an emotional night for the players, fans and manager Jose Mourinho, whose visible delight at the final whistle will have furthered his reverence in the eyes of the Giallorossi, but will also serve as a significant shot in the arm for UEFA and Aleksander Ceferin, who will have been drinking in the manager’s tears as though they were droplets of the finest Bordeaux.
At the unveiling of the new competition at the start of this season, Ceferin said: “The new UEFA club competition makes UEFA’s club competitions more inclusive than ever before. There will be more matches for more clubs, with more associations represented in the group stages. To give clubs and fans the chance to dream and compete for European honours.”
Cue eyerolling from the cynics who didn’t ask for or want another European knockout and saw through the UEFA officials’ flagrant attempt to line their own pockets. If the Europa League was the sh*t on the Champions League shoe, the Europa Conference League was the bit of pavement you scrape that sh*t onto. The only bugbear for the elitists in England – where the Big Six fans control the narrative – was that this lowly excuse for a competition didn’t have it’s own night of the week, though “Friday nights, BT Sport 7” isn’t the catchiest of chants.
Brendan Rodgers, whose Leicester side were defeated by Mourinho’s Roma on Thursday, added fuel to the mockery fire by admitting, almost proudly, that “I don’t even know what the competition is” after the Foxes were demoted from the Europa League back in December. And relegation continues to be a problem for the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Football365…