Former European champions Ajax and Marseille in Europa League group with Brighton and AEK Athens

MONACO — Former European champions Ajax and Marseille had been drawn Friday to play Premier League membership Brighton and AEK Athens in one of many hardest Europa League teams.

Brighton will play in a European competitors for the primary time within the membership’s 122-year historical past after ending a club-best sixth within the prime division final season.

Liverpool, a three-time winner of the second-tier European competitors, was drawn to face Union Saint-Gilloise, Toulouse and Austrian membership LASK. Liverpool midfielder Alexis Mac Allister might now play towards his older brother, Kevin, who’s a defender at Belgian membership Union.

Europa Conference League champion West Ham will play Olympiakos, Freiburg and Serbian membership TSC, whereas Roma, coached by Jose Mourinho, shall be attempting to achieve its third straight European closing in a bunch with Slavia Prague, Sheriff and Servette. Villarreal, the 2021 Europa League champion, landed in a bunch with Rennes, Maccabi Haifa and Panathinaikos.

When Marseille and Ajax had been successful the Champions League titles in 1993 and 1995, respectively, Brighton was a struggling third-division membership that quickly sank additional.

From 1997-99, Brighton needed to go away its house metropolis to play in a borrowed stadium about 100 kilometers (70 miles) away. The Seagulls returned to the Premier League in 2017.

“If you go back 25 years to the darker days of the club many (fans) would probably never have thought they would see this happen,” Brighton chief govt Paul Barber stated in Monaco.

The different teams are: Bayer Leverkusen, Qarabag, Molde and Hacken; Atalanta, Sporting Lisbon, Sturm Graz and Rakow Czestochowa; and Rangers, Real Betis, Sparta Prague and Aris Limassol.

The group video games will begin on Sept. 21 and end on Dec. 14. The knockout rounds are scheduled to start in February with the ultimate on May 22 in Dublin, Ireland.