Villas-Boas: Don't allow 3rd place UCL teams to play Europa League

The new FC Chelsea manager André Villas-Boas has made an interesting observation and brought-up a controversial idea on the issue of teams finishing third in the UEFA Champions League group stage and from there moving on into the knockout stages of the UEFA Europa League.

"The teams dropping from Champions League to the Europa League shouldn't be the teams that qualify third in the group," said Villas-Boas.

And Villas-Boas had an idea on what to rather consider by saying, "It should be the teams that go on to the last 16 of the Champions League. Because it looks like you are promoting the unsuccessful teams in the group phase."

The UEFA Champions League is the biggest club football competition in the world, it features the biggest clubs in world football and sometimes they do get eliminated early in the tournament not able to reach the quarterfinals, semifinals or final.

The Europa League meanwhile is set to enter its third season with the competition still to build on its reputation though UEFA say it has already build a better brand value then the old UEFA Cup. But if instead of the third place finishers of the Champions League group stage, you rather get the eight losers from the pre-quarterfinals (Round of 16) into the competition then its value surely would go further as some of the biggest names in Europe could feature from then on in the Europa League.

Surely an idea which UEFA should look into and maybe consider...