As Sean wrote last week, “It’s tough to care much about the beginning of the European footballing season. After the buzz of the World Cup and the always fun transfer drama, club football’s jerky starts seem less urgent.”  But with the Champions League getting started over the past two days, and now the Europa League kicking off today, there are really just too many appealing matches to keep up with.

To be brutally honest, we (or rather I) don’t really understand the Europa League–who qualifies and how and why?  Who knows.  But at the end of the day, it means midweek games between the (not-quite-)top clubs in Europe.

So w/o further ado, here is the link to the fixtures and results.

Notable results: Man City beats Salzburg 2-0 in Austria, but La Liga table-toppers Atletico Madrid lose…to Aris Thessaloniki FC?! We don’t know anything about the latter side..though we think it’s a safe to assume they’re Greek. Villareal also lost to Dinamo Zagreb (we did learn from @SoccerInsiderthat Jozy Altidore got a full 90mins in that match), while Dynamo Kyiv drew with FC BATE Borisov at home…

Well, there are too many matches to give a full run-down. There are 48 teams in this league (split into 12 groups (A-L) of 4 teams each), and they all played today on Matchday 1, so that means 24 matches!  Matchday 2 is in two weeks, on Thursday September 30, with 24 more matches.

Here’s a summary of the structure of the league from the same uefa.com page:

Qualifying

In matches in the three qualifying rounds and the play-offs, clubs play two matches against each other on a home-and-away basis. The club which scores the greater aggregate of goals qualifies for the next round, with away goals and then penalties used to determine the winner in the event of a draw.

Group stage

The 38 play-off round winners join the ten losers from the UEFA Champions League play-offs. The clubs are split into 12 groups of four teams, playing home and away against each of their pool opponents between September and December. Two sides from each section advance, proceeding into the round of 32 alongside eight third-placed teams from the UEFA Champions League group stage.

Knockout phase

From the last 32 until the semi-finals, clubs play two games against each other on a home-and-away basis with the same rules as the qualifying and play-off rounds applied. In the last 32, group winners and the four third-placed sides from the UEFA Champions League with the best records are seeded, guaranteeing they will play the second leg at home. Teams from the same group or the same association cannot be drawn together. From the round of 16 onwards the draw is free.

Final

The final is decided by a single match, which this season will be played in Dublin on Wednesday 18 May.