2010–11 UEFA Europa League group stage

This article details the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League group stage.

The group stage featured 48 teams: the title holders, Atlético Madrid, the 37 winners of the play-off round, and the 10 losing teams from the Champions League play-off round^[1]

The teams were drawn into twelve groups of four, and played each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The matchdays were 16 September, 30 September, 21 October, 4 November, 1–2 December, and 15–16 December 2010.

The top two teams in each group advanced to the round of 32, where they were joined by the eight third-placed teams from the 2010–11 UEFA Champions League group stage.

Seeding

The draw for the group stage was held in Monaco on 27 August 2010 at 1:00pm CEST (UTC+2).

Teams were seeded into four pots^[2]^[3] based on their 2010 UEFA club coefficients.^[4] The title holders, Atlético Madrid, were automatically seeded into Pot 1. Teams from the same national association could not be drawn against each other. Pot 1 held teams ranked 4–39, Pot 2 held teams ranked 40–69, Pot 3 held teams ranked 74–127, while Pot 4 held teams ranked 130–217 and unranked teams.

Group winners and runners-up advanced to the round of 32

Pot 1
Team	Coeff.
Atlético Madrid ^TH	63.951
Liverpool	115.371
Sevilla ^CL-n	108.951
Porto	76.659
Villarreal	70.951
CSKA Moscow	66.758
PSV Eindhoven	66.309
Zenit Saint Petersburg ^CL-n	61.258
Juventus	59.867
Sporting CP	57.659
VfB Stuttgart	52.841
AZ	48.309

Pot 2
Team	Coeff.
Steaua București	47.898
Lille	46.748
Dynamo Kyiv ^CL-n	42.910
Anderlecht ^CL-c	42.580
Bayer Leverkusen	40.841
Paris Saint-Germain	39.748
Club Brugge	36.580
Palermo	35.867
Getafe	33.951
Beşiktaş	33.890
Manchester City	33.371
Sampdoria ^CL-n	30.867

Pot 3
Team	Coeff.
Sparta Prague ^CL-c	27.395
AEK Athens	25.979
Metalist Kharkiv	25.410
Levski Sofia	25.400
Rosenborg ^CL-c	23.980
Red Bull Salzburg ^CL-c	19.915
CSKA Sofia	15.400
Odense	14.970
Napoli	14.867
Borussia Dortmund	14.841
Dinamo Zagreb	14.466
BATE Borisov	13.308

Pot 4
Team	Coeff.
Aris	12.979
Rapid Wien	11.915
PAOK	11.479
Lech Poznań	11.008
Karpaty Lviv	7.910
Young Boys ^CL-n	7.675
Utrecht	7.309
Gent	6.580
Lausanne-Sport	5.675
Sheriff Tiraspol ^CL-c	5.458
Debrecen	5.350
Hajduk Split	3.466

th Title Holder

^CL-c Losing teams from the Champions League play-off round (Champions Path)

^CL-n Losing teams from the Champions League play-off round (Non-Champions Path)

On the first four matchdays, when matches were played only on Thursdays, six groups played their matches at 19:00 CET/CEST, while the other six groups played their matches at 21:05 CET/CEST, with the two sets of groups (A–F, G–L) alternating between each matchday. On the final two matchdays, when matches were played on both Wednesdays and Thursdays, the two sets of groups were divided into four smaller subsets (A–C, D–F, G–I, J–L), with each subset of groups playing on a different day and time. Based on this principle, the draw was controlled for clubs from the same association in order to split the teams evenly. For example, if there were two teams from the same association, each team was drawn into a different set of groups (A–F, G–L); if there were four teams from the same association, each team was drawn into a different subset of groups (A–C, D–F, G–I, J–L).

The fixtures were decided after the draw. There were certain restrictions, e.g., teams from the same city do not play at home on the same matchday (UEFA tries to avoid teams from the same city play at home on the same day or on consecutive days), and Russian teams do not play at home on the last matchday due to cold weather.

Tie-breaking criteria

If two or more teams were equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria applied to determine the rankings:^[5]

higher number of points obtained in the group matches played among the teams in question;
superior goal difference from the group matches played among the teams in question;
higher number of goals scored away from home in the group matches played among the teams in question;
superior goal difference from all group matches played;
higher number of goals scored;
higher number of coefficient points accumulated by the club in question, as well as its association, over the previous five seasons.

Groups

Times up to end of October are CEST (UTC+2), thereafter times are CET (UTC+1)

Group A

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification	MC	LEC	JUV	SAL
1	Manchester City	6	3	2	1	11	6	+5	11	Advance to knockout phase	—	3–1	1–1	3–0
2	Lech Poznań	6	3	2	1	11	8	+3	11	Advance to knockout phase	3–1	—	1–1	2–0
3	Juventus	6	0	6	0	7	7	0	6		1–1	3–3	—	0–0
4	Red Bull Salzburg	6	0	2	4	1	9	−8	2		0–2	0–1	1–1	—

Source: Soccerway

16 September 2010

19:00

Red Bull Salzburg	0–2	Manchester City
	Report	Silva 8' Jô 63'

Red Bull Arena, Wals-Siezenheim

Attendance: 25,150

Referee: Georgios Daloukas (Greece)

16 September 2010