By the time the Europa League rolls into town each week, we’ve already had two nights of Champions League football. And unless your team is playing or you have a photographic memory, you’re probably going to struggle to name most of the teams who are about to play.

Unglamorous teams play on an unglamorous Thursday evening in unglamorous locations; half of them playing will even be playing at the unglamorous time of 6pm UK time. That’s Europe’s second tier continental club football tournament for you.

And yet, it should be so good: a few dozen teams who are not part of the elite duel it out on a European stage that they should be embracing: free from pressure and given a chance to shine. And what’s more, you get all the fun of a Champions League night twice in the space of a few hours as the games start early and finish late! It should be a joy to watch teams who will never win the Champions League battle it out for the sheer pleasure of playing on the European stage.

Maybe one day it will be like that.

Pochettino

But if you take a look at leagues all over Europe, you'll find a scenario that threatens to make the Europa League both incredibly important and incredibly dangerous for the teams competing in it.

In England particularly, the Premier League is so tight that Manchester United - the country's most successful club - find top of the league and the relegation zone equidistant from their current position, eight points away. Spain, Italy, Germany and France are all similarly tight. In Holland the top three teams all have good reason to believe that they can kick on and win the league this year, too.

The whole world seems to be seeing more competitive domestic leagues this season. That's despite the influx of money in the English game, and despite financial domination favouring just a handful of clubs in the other leagues.

And that means the final Champions League spot that's available to teams who haven't managed to finish in the top places of their own leagues - especially the traditionally big ones - have one final chance to get into the competition through the Europa league. Imagine if the League table ended as it was right now: Tottenham finish fifth, but only three points behind the leaders, they have a fantastic season, but one too many draws as Harry Kane's injury means they struggle to break down stubborn defences means they don't get a Champions League spot. Plenty of teams can have a great season this year and still not make it into the top European competition. (Admittedly it probably won't be quite that close, but you can guess that it will probably be close than last season, when fifth-placed Manchester United ended 15 points behind the champions.

The Europa League, then, is no longer punishment for a poor season, though it may well seem scant reward for a good one.

Jurgen Klopp celebrates beating Manchester United in the Europa League

Of the six biggest teams in the Premier League - the Manchester clubs, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham - only four will be competing in next season's Champions League unless one of them wins the Europa League, too. The problem is, winning the title is presumably the goal for each one of those clubs this season. They can't all finish in the Champions League spots let alone the league, and - with the exception of United - they're all playing fairly well so far. So you'd imagine some of those teams are going to look back at the end of the season and wonder how they could play so well and end up out of the Champions League.

Further afield, and if leagues all over Europe are raising their levels in a similar way, and if it leads to a scenario where big teams play well and still finish outside the European spots, we could start to see the second tier competition become incredibly important once again. It won't simply afford those clubs the chance to play against other teams in European competition (and remember, last season's Manchester United Liverpool clash was taken pretty serious despite the competition - even fallen giants still have pride), but the eventual prize of a Champions League place could finally prove the carrot UEFA intended it to be in the first place.

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Yet if those big clubs still left in the Europa League by the quarter final stage are also challenging for league titles and domestic Champions League-placing spots, it will be interesting to see which competition they'll prioritise.

Next season there may well be too many good teams in the Europa League next season not to take it seriously as a competition, yet there could be too many title-chasing teams in it who don't see it as a competition worth actually spending resources on.

It adds another bit of spice to post Christmas football at least, but wouldn't it be great if the Europa League and its million matches a night. It's ironic that all of the money currently pumped into making football so unfair could make it fairer at the very top of the sport; and it could turn the ugly duckling of European competition into a swan that's actually worth watching.