While a seventh-place finish last term meant that Tottenham failed to qualify for either the Champions League or Europa League for the first time in over a decade, the Lilywhites will be competing in the inaugural Europa Conference League.
Football.London have now given a full breakdown of how the competition works, including who Spurs could be facing, as well as the dates and times of the various fixtures.
There will be 32 teams involved in the competition and much like the Champions League, the sides will be split into eight groups of four, with the top two in each group advancing to the knockout phase of the competition.
While the eight group winners will advance straight into the Round of 16, the eight runners-up will go into a preliminary knockout round where they will face the third-placed teams from the Europa League group stage.
However, none of the 32 teams, including Spurs, qualify directly for the group stages, with qualifiers and a play-off round determining who qualifies.
Tottenham, along with Union Berlin, Roma and Stade Rennes, will enter at the competition at the play-off stage in August, while Pacos de Ferreira, Rubin Kazan, Anderlecht, Kolos Kovalivka, Vitesse, Trabzonspor, LASK, Luzern, PAOK will enter in the third qualifying round.
This means that Spurs will have to win one two-legged tie in order to seal their place in the group stages of the competition, with the draw taking place at the start of next month.
MORE SPURS STORIES
Games will take place on Thursdays, with matches kicking off at either 5.45 pm or 8 pm.
Here is the full schedule as per Football.London:
Second qualifying round: 22 & 29 July
Third qualifying round: 5 & 12 August
Play-offs: 19 & 26 August
Group stage: 16 & 30 September, 21 October, 4 & 25 November, 9 December
Knockout round play-offs: 17 & 24 February
Round of 16: 10 & 17 March
Quarter-finals: 7 & 14 April
Semi-finals: 28 April & 5 May
Final: 25 May
Spurs Web Opinion
The one silver lining with this competition is the fact that we at least do not have to play three stages of qualifiers to get into the group stages as we did in the Europa League last season.
Given that Spurs would likely have to travel to the far reaches of Europe, I would not be surprised if Nuno Espirito Santo decides to use the Under-23s for the early stages of the tournament.
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
