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Europe's second club competition has always rewarded a different kind of team than the Champions League — deep squads, punishing two-legged ties, and managers who make the competition a specialty. Since Tottenham won the first UEFA Cup in 1972, 31 different clubs from 11 countries have lifted the trophy, most recently Aston Villa in 2026, a 3–0 win over Freiburg that gave Unai Emery a record fifth title in the competition.
UEFA Cup, Europa League — One Trophy, Two Names
The competition ran as the UEFA Cup from 1972 to 2009, a straight knockout open to clubs that missed out on the European Cup — the format that produced Sevilla's early titles and a run of West German and English winners through the 1970s and 80s. The 2009/10 season brought the rebrand to the Europa League, adding a group stage and a direct promotion path from the Champions League's third-place finishers — the format that has been in place ever since.
No club has stamped its identity on this competition the way Sevilla have — seven titles across seventeen years, the single biggest reason Spain leads the country ranking above. Three of those came with Unai Emery in the dugout between 2014 and 2016; his name recurs throughout that Sevilla era and now again with Aston Villa, making him, by a distance, the most successful manager in the competition's history.
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