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BY VICTOR OSOWOCHI – The San Mamés Stadium in Bilbao, Spain, comes alive tonight with the bragging rights of hosting the 2025 UEFA Europa League final. This is the 54th season of Europe’s secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 16th season since it was renamed from the UEFA Cup to the UEFA Europa League.
Bilbao, an industrial port city in northern Spain, is the host city of tonight’s all-English clubs showdown between two struggling sides, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United. Considered the de facto capital of the Basque Country, with a skyscraper-filled downtown, Bilbao is famed for the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which sparked revitalization when it opened in 1997.
In this city surrounded by green mountains, the stage is set for Spurs and United to go for each other’s jugular in a make or mar encounter in a pathetic season, both may be in a hurry to forget. This will be the 11th tournament final to feature two teams from the same association and the third all-English final. Also, today’s match is notable because of the two teams’ low-level performances in the Premier League.
Football pundits may not be wrong in suggesting that, in fairness, the atmosphere is not much like a major European final, given that the battle is between 16th and 17th-placed sides in the Premier League, with a woeful record of having won just one of their last 10 league games.
However, despite their unimpressive domestic records, winners on the night will automatically earn a league phase spot in the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League and the right to play against the winners of the 2024–25 UEFA Champions League for the 2025 UEFA Super Cup.
For Tottenham Hotspur, they are in their fourth UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League final, the first time since the competition was rebranded in 2009. But this would be the sixth time they are appearing in the final of a UEFA competition, having played in one UEFA Champions League final (losing in 2019), one Cup Winners’ Cup final (winning in 1963 to become the first British team to win a European trophy), and three UEFA Cup finals (winning the inaugural competition in 1972 and then in 1984, and losing in 1974).
On their part, Manchester United are in their thirteenth final in UEFA competitions, having won the European Cup/Champions League on three occasions (1968, the first English team to win the title, 1999, and 2008) and lost twice (2009 and 2011). The Old Trafford Landlords have also won one Cup Winners’ Cup final (1991), played in two UEFA Europa League finals (winning in 2017 and losing in 2021), and contested four UEFA Super Cups (winning in 1991 and losing in 1999, 2008, and 2017).
Interestingly, both sides have met 204 times, with United winning 95 matches and Tottenham 57. They met in two title-deciding matches, the 1967 FA Charity Shield and 2009 Football League Cup final, both of which ended in draws. However, the latter was won by United on penalties.
Also, both met in a European tie in 1963, in which the then FA Cup holders, United, eliminated Tottenham, who were the tournament defending champions, in the second round of the Cup Winners’ Cup.
In the ongoing 2024–25 Premier League season, the two clubs have met twice, with Tottenham winning on both occasions, 3–0 at Old Trafford and 1–0 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Also, Tottenham beat United 4–3 in the 2024–25 EFL Cup quarter-finals, the first time United lost three times against Tottenham in the same season.
Already condemned to finish in the bottom half of the Premiership table, whichever side lost today’s final would not play in Europe next season.
En route to the final, the media described United’s victory over Olympique Lyonnais in the quarter-finals, in which they scored three times in the last few minutes of extra-time to turn a 4–2 deficit into a 5–4 win, as one of the greatest comebacks in the history of European football.
In the history of the Europa League competition, this is the third all-English final, after 1972 between Tottenham and Wolverhampton Wanderers and 2019 between Arsenal and Chelsea.
Ultimately, amidst the clamour and debate that surrounds it, the prospect of a final featuring teams viewed by some as unworthy, alongside the allure of economic incentives, this event continues to stand as a pivotal European Cup final.
One team will emerge victorious, claiming a trophy that symbolizes not just achievement, but also pride and passion. This triumph will be celebrated fervently on that night, etching itself into the annals of history.
Football thrives on these moments of glory and dreams, embodying the very essence of the sport. – With agencies’ reports
