2020–21 UEFA Europa League group stage

The 2020–21 UEFA Europa League group stage began on 22 October 2020 and ended on 10 December 2020. A total of 48 teams competed in the group stage to decide 24 of the 32 places in the knockout phase of the 2020–21 UEFA Europa League.^[1][2]

Antwerp, Granada, Leicester City, Omonia and Sivasspor made their debut appearances in the group stage.

Draw

The draw for the group stage was held on 2 October 2020, 13:00 CEST, at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland.^[3]

In the case of associations with two or more representatives, clubs could be paired so that they played with different kick-off times (18.55 CET and 21:00 CET) for the benefit of TV audiences. If a paired club was drawn, for example, in groups A, B, C, D, E or F the other paired club – once drawn – would automatically be assigned to the first available group of G, H, I, J, K or L.
The following pairings were announced by UEFA after the group stage teams were confirmed:^[4]

On each matchday, one set of six groups played their matches at 18:55 CET/CEST, while the other set of six groups played their matches at 21:00 CET/CEST, with the two sets of groups alternating between each matchday. The fixtures were decided after the draw, using a computer draw not shown to public, with the following match sequence (Regulations Article 15.02):^[5]

Note: Positions for scheduling did not use the seeding pots, e.g. Team 1 was not necessarily the team from Pot 1 in the draw.

Group stage schedule

Matchday	Dates
Matchday 1	22 October 2020
Matchday 2	29 October 2020
Matchday 3	5 November 2020
Matchday 4	26 November 2020
Matchday 5	3 December 2020
Matchday 6	10 December 2020

There were scheduling restrictions: for example, teams from the same city (e.g. Celtic & Rangers, Arsenal & Tottenham Hotspur, Sparta Prague & Slavia Prague) in general were not scheduled to play at home on the same matchday (to avoid them playing at home on the same day, due to logistics and crowd control), and teams from "winter countries" (e.g. Russia) were not scheduled to play at home on the last matchday (due to cold weather).

Teams

Below were the participating teams (with their 2020 UEFA club coefficients),^[6] grouped by their seeding pot. They included:

• 18 teams which entered in the group stage
• 21 winners of the play-off round (8 from Champions Path, 13 from Main Path)
• 6 losers of the Champions League play-off round (4 from Champions Path, 2 from League Path)
• 3 League Path losers of the Champions League third qualifying round

Key to colours
Group winners and runners-up advance to round of 32

Pot 1 Team Notes Coeff.[6] Arsenal 91.000 Tottenham Hotspur [EL-MP] 85.000 Roma 80.000 Napoli 77.000 Benfica [CL-LQ] 70.000 Bayer Leverkusen 61.000 Villarreal 56.000 CSKA Moscow 44.000 Braga 41.000 Gent [CL-LP] 39.500 PSV Eindhoven [EL-MP] 37.000 Celtic [EL-CP] 34.000

Pot 2 Team Notes Coeff.[6] Dinamo Zagreb [EL-CP] 33.500 Sparta Prague 30.500 Slavia Prague [CL-CP] 27.500 Ludogorets Razgrad [EL-CP] 26.000 Young Boys [EL-CP] 25.500 Red Star Belgrade [EL-CP] 22.750 Rapid Wien [CL-LQ] 22.000 Leicester City 22.000  PAOK [CL-LP] 21.000 Qarabağ [EL-CP] 21.000 Standard Liège [EL-MP] 20.500 Real Sociedad 20.456

Pot 3 Team Notes Coeff.[6] Granada [EL-MP] 20.456 Milan [EL-MP] 19.000 AZ [CL-LQ] 18.500 Feyenoord 17.000  Maccabi Tel Aviv [CL-CP] 16.500  AEK Athens [EL-MP] 16.500 Rangers [EL-MP] 16.250 Molde [CL-CP] 15.000 1899 Hoffenheim 14.956 Hapoel Be'er Sheva [EL-MP] 14.000 LASK [EL-MP] 14.000 CFR Cluj [EL-CP] 12.500

Pot 4 Team Notes Coeff.[6] Zorya Luhansk 12.500 Nice 11.849 Lille 11.849 Rijeka [EL-MP] 11.000 Dundalk [EL-CP] 8.500 Slovan Liberec [EL-MP] 8.000 Antwerp 7.580 Lech Poznań [EL-MP] 7.000 Sivasspor 6.720 Wolfsberger AC 6.585 Omonia [CL-CP] 5.350 CSKA Sofia [EL-MP] 4.000

Notes

Format

In each group, teams played against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The group winners and runners-up advanced to the round of 32, where they were joined by the eight third-placed teams of the Champions League group stage.

Tiebreakers

Teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 16.01):^[5]

1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
4. Away goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
5. If more than two teams were tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams were still tied, all head-to-head criteria above were reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
6. Goal difference in all group matches;
7. Goals scored in all group matches;
8. Away goals scored in all group matches;
9. Wins in all group matches;
10. Away wins in all group matches;
11. Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
12. UEFA club coefficient.

Groups

The group stage fixtures were confirmed on 2 October 2020.^[7] The matchdays were 22 October, 29 October, 5 November, 26 November, 3 December, and 10 December 2020. The scheduled kickoff times were 18:55 and 21:00 CET/CEST.

Times are CET/CEST,^[note 1] as listed by UEFA (local times, if different, are in parentheses).

Group A

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		ROM	YB	CLJ	CSS
1	Roma	6	4	1	1	13	5	+8	13	Advance to knockout phase		—	3–1	5–0	0–0
2	Young Boys	6	3	1	2	9	7	+2	10			1–2	—	2–1	3–0
3	CFR Cluj	6	1	2	3	4	10	−6	5[a]			0–2	1–1	—	0–0
4	CSKA Sofia	6	1	2	3	3	7	−4	5[a]			3–1	0–1	0–2	—

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Group B

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		ARS	MOL	RW	DUN
1	Arsenal	6	6	0	0	20	5	+15	18	Advance to knockout phase		—	4–1	4–1	3–0
2	Molde	6	3	1	2	9	11	−2	10			0–3	—	1–0	3–1
3	Rapid Wien	6	2	1	3	11	13	−2	7			1–2	2–2	—	4–3
4	Dundalk	6	0	0	6	8	19	−11	0			2–4	1–2	1–3	—

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Group C

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		LEV	SLP	HBS	NCE
1	Bayer Leverkusen	6	5	0	1	21	8	+13	15	Advance to knockout phase		—	4–0	4–1	6–2
2	Slavia Prague	6	4	0	2	11	10	+1	12			1–0	—	3–0	3–2
3	Hapoel Be'er Sheva	6	2	0	4	7	13	−6	6			2–4	3–1	—	1–0
4	Nice	6	1	0	5	8	16	−8	3			2–3	1–3	1–0	—

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Group D

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		RAN	BEN	STL	LCH
1	Rangers	6	4	2	0	13	7	+6	14	Advance to knockout phase		—	2–2	3–2	1–0
2	Benfica	6	3	3	0	18	9	+9	12			3–3	—	3–0	4–0
3	Standard Liège	6	1	1	4	7	14	−7	4			0–2	2–2	—	2–1
4	Lech Poznań	6	1	0	5	6	14	−8	3			0–2	2–4	3–1	—

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Group E

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		PSV	GRA	PAOK	OMO
1	PSV Eindhoven	6	4	0	2	12	9	+3	12	Advance to knockout phase		—	1–2	3–2	4–0
2	Granada	6	3	2	1	6	3	+3	11			0–1	—	0–0	2–1
3	PAOK	6	1	3	2	8	7	+1	6			4–1	0–0	—	1–1
4	Omonia	6	1	1	4	5	12	−7	4			1–2	0–2	2–1	—

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Group F

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		NAP	RSO	AZ	RJK
1	Napoli	6	3	2	1	7	4	+3	11	Advance to knockout phase		—	1–1	0–1	2–0
2	Real Sociedad	6	2	3	1	5	4	+1	9			0–1	—	1–0	2–2
3	AZ	6	2	2	2	7	5	+2	8			1–1	0–0	—	4–1
4	Rijeka	6	1	1	4	6	12	−6	4			1–2	0–1	2–1	—

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Group G

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		LEI	BRA	ZOR	AEK
1	Leicester City	6	4	1	1	14	5	+9	13[a]	Advance to knockout phase		—	4–0	3–0	2–0
2	Braga	6	4	1	1	14	10	+4	13[a]			3–3	—	2–0	3–0
3	Zorya Luhansk	6	2	0	4	6	11	−5	6			1–0	1–2	—	1–4
4	AEK Athens	6	1	0	5	7	15	−8	3			1–2	2–4	0–3	—

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Group H

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		MIL	LOSC	SPP	CEL
1	Milan	6	4	1	1	12	7	+5	13	Advance to knockout phase		—	0–3	3–0	4–2
2	Lille	6	3	2	1	14	8	+6	11			1–1	—	2–1	2–2
3	Sparta Prague	6	2	0	4	10	12	−2	6			0–1	1–4	—	4–1
4	Celtic	6	1	1	4	10	19	−9	4			1–3	3–2	1–4	—

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Group I

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		VIL	MTA	SIV	QRB
1	Villarreal	6	5	1	0	17	5	+12	16	Advance to knockout phase		—	4–0	5–3	3–0[a]
2	Maccabi Tel Aviv	6	3	2	1	6	7	−1	11			1–1	—	1–0	1–0
3	Sivasspor	6	2	0	4	9	11	−2	6			0–1	1–2	—	2–0
4	Qarabağ	6	0	1	5	4	13	−9	1			1–3	1–1	2–3	—

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Group J

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		TOT	ANT	LASK	LUD
1	Tottenham Hotspur	6	4	1	1	15	5	+10	13	Advance to knockout phase		—	2–0	3–0	4–0
2	Antwerp	6	4	0	2	8	5	+3	12			1–0	—	0–1	3–1
3	LASK	6	3	1	2	11	12	−1	10			3–3	0–2	—	4–3
4	Ludogorets Razgrad	6	0	0	6	7	19	−12	0			1–3	1–2	1–3	—

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Group K

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		DZG	WAC	FEY	CSM
1	Dinamo Zagreb	6	4	2	0	9	1	+8	14	Advance to knockout phase		—	1–0	0–0	3–1
2	Wolfsberger AC	6	3	1	2	7	6	+1	10			0–3	—	1–0	1–1
3	Feyenoord	6	1	2	3	4	8	−4	5			0–2	1–4	—	3–1
4	CSKA Moscow	6	0	3	3	3	8	−5	3			0–0	0–1	0–0	—

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Group L

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification		HOF	ZVE	LIB	GNT
1	1899 Hoffenheim	6	5	1	0	17	2	+15	16	Advance to knockout phase		—	2–0	5–0	4–1
2	Red Star Belgrade	6	3	2	1	9	4	+5	11			0–0	—	5–1	2–1
3	Slovan Liberec	6	2	1	3	4	13	−9	7			0–2	0–0	—	1–0
4	Gent	6	0	0	6	4	15	−11	0			1–4	0–2	1–2	—

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Notes

References

External links

• Official website
• Fixtures and Results, 2020–21, UEFA.com