Following the draw for the league phase of the 2025-26 UEFA Europa League, we’ve used the Opta Power Rankings to rank each team’s fixtures in order of difficulty.
The draw for the league phase of the 2025-26 UEFA Europa League was completed in Monaco on Friday, and now we have a list of 144 fixtures to analyse.
Over eight matchdays from September to January, the 36 teams will play four games at home and four away. The sides who finish in the top eight of the league phase will progress to the round of 16, and the teams from ninth to 24th will go into a knockout play-off round to reach the last 16.
The table will look like a normal league in that everyone earns three points for a win and one for a draw before being sorted into order based on their results, but it isn’t quite the same as a normal league format. That’s because every team plays a different set of eight opponents.
With those eight league phase opponents different for each side, it’s not a completely level playing field. With that in mind, it’s natural to ask: who has the easiest draw, and who has the toughest?
That’s where we come in.
We have used Opta’s Power Rankings, which ranks 13,000 teams from across the world on the same scale, to give an objective average rating to each team’s set of eight Europa League fixtures for 2025-26. Using the average rating of every team’s opponents, we can work out precisely who has been given the kindest draw, and who has been given the biggest challenge.
And so, our next question is…
Which Teams Have the Easiest Europa League Fixtures?
It’s great news for Aston Villa fans, as they have been drawn the joint-second easiest league phase fixtures of the 36 teams in the competition this season.
The draw handed Unai Emery, the most successful manager in this competition with four previous titles, favourable games against the lowest-ranked team in the competition, Go Ahead Eagles (316th), and one of the only Pot 1 sides to rank outside the top 100 in the Opta Power Rankings, Salzburg (108th).
The average Opta Power Rating of Villa’s opponents is 83.3, level with Panathinaikos. Only Ligue 1 side Lyon’s league phase fixtures are deemed easier (82.1).
Aston Villa have also been helped in that they were unable to draw Nottingham Forest in this phase, with the fellow Premier League club the next highest-ranked team in the Opta Power Rankings (16th) after Villa.
Despite their high ranking, Forest’s first foray into the (modern) Europa League will see them play the joint-10th hardest fixtures in the league phase.
Elsewhere, Rangers fans will be happy they have an easier set of games (84.2) than bitter rivals Celtic…
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7 hours ago Ali TweedaleWhich Teams Have the Toughest Europa League Fixtures?
Celtic suffered a shock exit in the UEFA Champions League qualification play-offs to Kazakhstan’s Kairat, and their punishment for that is to face the third-hardest league phase fixtures in the Europa League.
There are only 14 Europa League teams other than Brendan Rodgers’ side to be in the Opta Power Rankings’ top 72, and Celtic will play against five of them: Roma (24th), Bologna (42nd), Feyenoord (45th), Sporting Braga (60th) and Crvena Zvezda (72nd).
Only FC Utrecht and Maccabi Tel Aviv (both 86.7) will face opponents with a higher average Opta Power Rating than Celtic (86.0).
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Europa League 2025-26 Fixture Difficulty: Who Has the Easiest and Toughest League Phase Games? Opta Analyst.
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