Europa League final 2025: Build up and latest updates from Tottenham vs Manchester United
5:08PM
'Six teams would be an absurdity'
The winners of tonight's final will join the Premier League's top five in next season's Champions League. It was once contentious when a tournament previously reserved for league winners was expanded to include two, three, and then four teams from the big leagues. Six would be unprecedented and would present logistical challenges. Clubs from the same association are not supposed to play each other in the league phase. The six Premier League teams will play eight games each in a 36-team tournament. You do the maths.
As Jim White writes here, it is part of the slow dilution of Europe's Premier club competition.
The time has long gone to hark back to the glorious days when the only way two clubs from the same country could make it into the European Cup is for one of them to have won the thing the previous season.
5:00PM
United and Spurs' season comes down to one night in Bilbao
It seems grossly unfair for a club's entire season to be defined by one 90 minutes, but that is the unavoidable predicament facing Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur going into tonight's Europa League final.
Losing a final is always painful, but sometimes offers forms of consolation: the wins along the away in a cup run for example, or the promise of greater success next season. That is not the case this evening. The losing finalists will be left with nothing, in every sense. No trophy, no Champions League qualification, no increase in revenues, and only a historically bad Premier League season on which to reflect during a long, bitter summer. Defeat could also prompt managerial change, especially in the case of Ange Postecoglou.
That has informed the sense that this game is more about looming negative consequences rather than the prize on offer, though Spurs supporters would dispute that. They have enjoyed several seasons in the Champions League in recent memory, including an appearance in the 2019 final. Major silverware has been absent since the 2008 League Cup though, a barren run of such infamy there is an X account tallying up the days since Tottenham's last trophy. The total stands at 6,296.
The opposite is probably true for United, who have lifted pots in each of the last two seasons but need Champions League revenues to fund the rejuvenation of the squad Ruben Amorim requires. Haphazard spending on transfer fees and wages and a decline in league position has put the club on a difficult financial footing in the PSR era. That has brought talks of selling academy graduates such as Kobbie Mainoo or Alejandro Garnacho. Win tonight and Amorim might be offered a shortcut in his rebuild, lose and it could stall further.
Tottenham have won this competition twice, in 1972 and 1984, while United did so in 2017 under Jose Mourinho. They lost the 2021 final on penalties to Villarreal, a result from which Ole Gunnar Solskjaer never quite recovered.
Spurs are without James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski through injury. United were handed a surprise boost as Lenny Yoro, Diogo Dalot and Joshua Zirkzee all trained this week. Amorim's dilemma will be whether to stick with Rasmus Hojlund, whose form has been stuck in a rut.
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