Stoke City fans invade Europe: The Potters will give it their best shot in this season's Europa League

As teams from across the continent enter another year of Europe’s Best of the Rest competition, the question remains: is the Europa League still a relevant, worthwhile competition? While the Champions League is Europe’s most coveted footballing crown, fought for by the best teams on the planet, the Europa League seems more and more like the children’s table at a party; uncool and apparently beneath the teams unable to cut the mustard with the Champions, a demoralising distraction from league football for the rest.

Only yesterday did Spurs manager Harry Redknapp have to defend himself and deny accusations that he was treating the competition as a distraction. With Liverpool set to visit White Hart Lane on Sunday and a raft of injuries to senior players, Redknapp has chosen to leave the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor, Scott Parker, Luka Modric, and Gareth Bale at home. Indeed, right back Kyle Walker is the only first team player to retain his place from Saturday’s 2-0 win at Molineux and make the trip to face PAOK Salonika. Added to which, Rafael Van Der Vaart has launched an attack on the club’s ‘annoying’ decision to leave him out of the squad, saying “they could at least have consulted [me].” Having endured a rotten start to the Premier League, the last thing Spurs need is for Van Der Vaart to become unhappy.

While Redknapp has argued that this decision will give him an opportunity to assess the abilities of fringe players such as Jesser Waller-Lassen, Cameron Lancaster and Alex Pritchard, it’s an argument that is unlikely to be of much comfort to the Spurs fans making the trip to Greece eager to see their star players in action. While Roman Pavlyuchenko and Sebastien Bassong are also named in the squad that cannot be changed until after the Europa League Group Stages, it is obvious where Redknapp’s priorities lie.

While Harry Redknapp’s decisions are his to make and open to interpretation, there is no confusing televison’s attitude towards the Europa League. While the Champions League takes pride of place on ITV1 and Sky Sports, its ugly sister is banished to the obscurity of Channel Five and ITV4. Furthermore, the estimated global audience for the Champions League final consistently tops 100 million people. Though the global figures for the Europa League are unavailable, the statistics for the UK show for last year’s final between Fulham and Atletico Madrid was recieved by 3 million sets. You could be forgiven for thinking Mohamed Al-Fayed had left all the televisions in Harrods tuned to the match.

Fulham are another team apparently ruing another year in the Europa League. Having already played six games in qualifying for the competition, manager Martin Jol blamed his team’s poor start in the Premier League on the disruptive influence the Thursday night games had on his preparations.

‘We have played six games now. Maybe you would prefer to play eight or nine games in the pre-season as some other players didn’t play a lot so that is probably a disadvantage…I cannot be satisfied with the preparation because we only played on a Thursday and you can’t just focus on these matches the whole time…You have to work on conditioning as well so it’s not easy,’ said the Dutchman.

However, is Jol using the Europa League as a shield to hide behind? Surely some competitive matches against lesser opposition are an ideal way to get the team match-fit and ready for a season in the Premiership? Certainly, the pre-season fixtures in the competition have done Stoke no harm. Tony Pulis’s men seem to be the only English team in the competition relishing the chance to rub shoulders with Europe’s also-ran elite. Although flagship signing Peter Crouch is unable to play in the group stage, Stoke will send a full-strength team into every game, knowing that a win is by no means beyond them.

While many would cite the parachuting of teams knocked out of the Champions League into the Europa League as unfair and another reason to treat it with unaffected contempt, Stoke will relish the chance to play against bigger, better opposition. Indeed, it is possible that, should Arsenal be knocked out of the Champions League, they would be pitted against the Potters in the knockout stages of the Europa League. With their form in the Premiership and uncanny knack for undoing the Gunners, Stoke would fancy their chances.

So, while Spurs and Fulham will treat the honour of playing in the Europa League as dubious at best, and Birmingham struggle in the Championship while facing off-the-pitch distractions with Carson Yeung’s ongoing legal wrangles, Stoke seem to be the only English team willing and able to make a fight of the Europa League. It is testament to Tony Pulis’s mentality that Stoke are constantly seeking to improve, to outshine their performance of the previous year – an ethos other teams would do well to adopt.

Before kicking a ball, merely by naming a full-strength squad, Stoke have proved a vital truth about the Europa League. To play in it is indeed an honour, but it is bestowed upon the wrong teams. If the likes of Spurs and Fulham see the competition as beneath them, let them forefeit their places. There are plenty of teams who would surely jump at the chance to replace them and fight for European silverware.

True, you’ve got to be in it to win it, but if your heart’s not in it, you might as well stay at home.