Chelsea will play Europa Conference League after Manchester City lose FA Cup final

05/25/2024 12:10 PM

Thanks for nothing, City

Oh the places we'll go!

Manchester United have pulled off a shock victory against Manchester City in today's FA Cup final, 2-1, which means that Chelsea will be playing only Europa Conference League football next season, as opposed to Europa League. So, it's UEFA's third-rate competition for us instead of the second.

City essentially failed to turn up for this game — just as they had failed to turn up for our semifinal, but we let them off the hook — gifted an own goal to their bitter rivals, then conceded a very good second before the half. A bit of a gaffe from André Onana, letting a Doku shot squirm through his hands, made things slightly interesting in the final minutes, but City never really looked like winning, or caring.

Thanks for nothing, I guess.

On the plus side, Europa Conference is a new competition for us — it's only existed for a few years, after all — and we can now add it to the trophy cabinet. Plus, we'll get to go (probably) to some new and interesting locales, perhaps even to my hometown! I mean, from a personal standpoint, that would be pretty cool!

Also, presumably the Conference will allow us to rotate easily and help distribute the workload among the squad.

This is assuming we don't just pull out of it because we don't want UEFA's financial fair play scrutiny.

Anyway, Europa Conference here we gooooooo!

Chelsea will enter as a seeded team in the "Play-off" stage, the last qualifying stage before the "League" proper begins. The draw for the play-offs will be held August 5, with games set for August 22 and 29.