Qualify for Champions League or Win the Uefa / FA Cup?
When Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pedersen was asked to choose between a top-four finish and winning the UEFA Cup, he picked the UEFA Cup.
This caught my attention, because it’s something that I’ve said in the past and have had a long discussion with Newcastle United fans over at the nufcblog.com forums (although we talked about the FA Cup instead of the UEFA Cup). This also flies smack into the face of populist media who sometimes turn ‘Champions League qualification’ into a holy grail (although the Tottenham board are not beyond such insanity either) that just serves to heap pressure on teams.
So I’d like to ask all non-big four fans - what is more important:
1) Qualifying for the Champions League or
2) Winning the Uefa Cup / FA Cup?
It would be especially interesting to hear from West Ham, Blackburn, Manchester City, Portsmouth and Everton fans - although Spurs fans are welcome to contribute as well 
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I am first to post! ^^ Hmmmz from my point of view we must see the size of the club. Whether it is realistic for them to qualify for UEFA champions league or not. For clubs like Man City, Spurs, Blackburn and Newcastle they are not the top 4 clubs in England. So having a choice i think winning the UEFA cup will be very very good for such clubs.
i think going after the uefa cup championship might be more realistic than trying to qualify for champions league, especially financially. it is conceivable that spurs are having such a rough start because of the imperative to reach the top 4, and the lack of immediate success caused all kinds of irrational responses, from management as well as media…i think seville have presented an interesting case study, having won it twice in a row, and having their coach the prime target to move, ironically?, to spurs to help them take the next step…if you can win the uefa cup, you will attract higher quality players and perhaps not have to offer a premium for them that teams w/o european football opportunity, or the perception of that, have to offer…
That is why Morten Gamst Pedersen is a realistic man. Think of it this way, if Morten Gamst Pedersen is playing for Manchester United, you think he will make that statement? Sir Alex Fergusson going to fry him if he made that statement! ^^
there is really not any choice. silverware is more important… think about coming 10th in epl but winning the fa, uefa n carling cups. n direct qualification 2 europe in prime
Winning FA Cup or any Cup is generally more important to most English fans than qualifying for a different tournament the following year. The Champions League is a money making exercise. The UEFA Cup and FA Cup are both tournaments with decades of history and you actually get to go to a final!
The Chumps League is a tournament. Now, if you said “choose between WINNING the Champions League and winning the FA/UEFA” then that would be an easy choice.
And I believe the question that Pedersen answered and Ahmed was asking was a theoretical question - nothing to do with what is realistic or not. To the average English fan I would suggest that the FA Cup is a big deal. To overseas fans there is less understanding of this so an American Man Utd fan (or whatever country) is not going to understand that philosophy.
Even with a multi-millionaire owner, I personally couldn’t care less about the Chumps League. It’s the 30,000 “new” Chelsea supporters who have the interest… though with a 24K attendance yesterday I am not so sure about that. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see West Ham play there one day. But it’s not the be-all-and-end-all.
#my last post was a bit confusing - point is “qualification for Chumps League” is just that - qualifying for another tournament in the following year which you could then get immediately knocked out of. Winning a Cup is Winning a Cup. Give me the silverware any day of the week.
I’m a Big 4 fan, so maybe I don’t understand. But I’m shocked at the response. If this is true, why weren’t Spurs fans writing article after article this summer about how they can win the UEFA cup?
Making the CL from England is proof you’ve arrived, no? Proof you’re truly a big club. In the UEFA, you’re playing a lot of teams that are good, but not good enough to make the last 16 of the CL. Maybe the FA Cup, where you’re playing the best teams in England, I could understand.
my rationale is that uefa cup, or the fa too, can serve a mid-level club as a stepping stone to realistically competing for a top four finish. as things stand now, even spending huge sums (spurs) hasnt made breaking into the top 4 easy, and not all the midlevels can atempt to buy entrance into that club…so winning the ‘lower’ cups can be an excellent source of confidence, revenue and recruiting, thereby making them more competitive and improving their chances at building their way to the top 4…
as a tangent, how does the proposed changes to the qualifying process for CL, ie, the FA cup winner going instead of the 4th place team in the EPL factor into this discussion for these clubs?
Thanks for all your replies.
Personally I feel that if you don’t have a realistic shot of winning the Champions League then your resources are better spent elsewhere. Ditto with the Uefa Cup (hence Reading’s stance last season on favouring the league instead of the Cup if they had qualified).
Silverware over qualification any day.
Regarding Sam Adriance’s point on Spurs fans - because they have two clubs in their city that are bigger than them and in the Champions League, and for them it’s a social thing (plus their popular rationale was that they’d push Arsenal out if they got in, which made it more attractive).
Realistically speaking Spurs will be better off winning the Uefa Cup - the long-term impact of winning a trophy is more than qualifying for CL one season and then being dumped out in the group stages.
And like FC said, there’s a reason I mentioned the FA Cup - it matters to English fans, a lot.
Sometimes the UEFA Cup is seen as the poorman’s Champions League but when your club is in it. I mean when they are really in it and involved in a do or die game, a televised European game at home with the noise and emotion - then that is real and what football is about.
I’m a Liverpool fan and their progress to the Uefa Cup final under Gerard Houllier was no less exciting or important at the time than getting to two Champions League finals.
As a fan who follows the Spurs and Fulham, for both clubs I think the FA cup would be a bigger deal. For teams like Fulham who are so far behind the Big-4 money power curve, they don’t have a realistic shot at a CL qualification by placing top-4 in the PL table. Fans have to get their mind right and lust for the glory of winning the FA Cup tournament.
winning/doing well in the UEFA cup is a stepping stone to becoming a big club. Look at Sevilla for example. 2 years ago if they had qualified for the CL they would have been a 4th seed and probably would have been out in the group stages. Instead they did well in the UC and built up their proficiency(or whatever it is) and when they were good enough to qualify for the CL they were 2nd seeds and have a great chance of progressing.
As a Spurs fan, I would take a Cup victory, hands down right now. Not even a difficult decision. Maybe a little sustained success would change my mind but ending the Cup drought would be nice.
There are still loads on here who are going on about “stepping stone” to champions league. FOOTBALL IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE. Don’t you get that? It has been around for what? A decade? The English League and FA Cup has been around for??? 120 years maybe? I am sure someone can google the exact date.
I would like West Ham to win FA/UEFA/League Cup (aka Carling Cup) partly cos we haven’t won anything for two decades but also just because it’s a trophy. Our new owners want Champs League qualification which is fine but many fans don’t really care. The attitude about Champs League is another example of sport mirroring society where many, many people fall for marketing and BS over history and community.
Almost every ground was half-empty in Champs League so far this week. I think there were only two sell-out matches. If Chelski got to the FA Cup Final their tickets would still be going on the black market for £1,000 or close to it but they get 24K attendance in Chumps League. And this is what everyone is supposed to aspire to. Why? So we can buy more players who can in turn sell more Playstations and more lager for the sponsors?
as a west ham fan i would say at this stage i would go for the uefa cup (even tho we got beat in the 1st round last season:() but like said before it can be a huge stepping stone financially, and it can give the players a winning experience in europe compared to being bundled out in the group stages of the champs league. But if u make the champs league and dont make it in the top 2 u still got a shot at gettin in the uefa cup;)