{"id":240,"date":"2016-08-28T07:30:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T11:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/?p=240"},"modified":"2016-08-29T19:44:19","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T23:44:19","slug":"previewing-manchester-uniteds-europa-league-opponents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2016\/08\/28\/previewing-manchester-uniteds-europa-league-opponents\/","title":{"rendered":"Previewing Manchester United Europa League Opponents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Manchester United<\/strong> have been drawn in <strong>Group A<\/strong> of the <strong>2016\/17 Europa League<\/strong>. They will face <strong>Turkish<\/strong> giants\u00a0<strong>Fenerbah\u00e7e<\/strong>, <strong>Dutch<\/strong> side <strong>Feyenoord<\/strong> and <strong>Ukrainian<\/strong> unknowns <strong>FC Zorya Luhansk<\/strong>. Manager <strong>Jos\u00e9 Mourinho<\/strong> has not competed in this tournament since 2004, when he won the trophy then known as the <strong>UEFA Cup<\/strong>, with <strong>Porto<\/strong>. It\u2019s fair to say that United\u2019s Europa League opponents make up a tricky, but very winnable, group.<\/p>\n<p>Previewing Manchester United Europa League Opponents<\/p>\n<h3>United\u2019s Tournament History<\/h3>\n<p>Manchester United\u2019s first participation was in the <strong>1964-65<\/strong> season, when it was known as the <strong>Inter-Cities Fairs Cup<\/strong>. This was also their best showing in the tournament. They reached the semi-final, losing to eventual winners\u00a0<strong>Ferencv\u00e1ros<\/strong> of <strong>Hungary<\/strong>. During\u00a0its early days, the Fairs Cup was an independent competition. In 1971 it became the UEFA Cup, with Europe\u2019s governing body realising the growing importance of continental football. Despite\u00a0this <strong>UEFA<\/strong>does not recognise any winners of the Fairs Cup in their list of honours, unlike <strong>FIFA<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>United competed in the UEFA Cup six times between 1976 and 1995. Their <strong>1984-85 <\/strong>elimination in the quarter-finals to another Hungarian side, <strong>Videoton<\/strong> was the closest they came to success. In <strong>1995-96<\/strong> they were eliminated by <strong>Russian<\/strong>side <strong>Rotor Volgograd<\/strong> on away goals. The game was most memorable for the fact that goalkeeper <strong>Peter Schmeichel\u00a0<\/strong>equalised with a last minute header.<\/p>\n<h2>Previewing Manchester United&#8217;s Europa League Opponents<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2016\/08\/28\/previewing-manchester-uniteds-europa-league-opponents\/\" target=\"_self\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester United have been drawn in Group A of the 2016\/17 Europa League. They will face Turkish giants\u00a0Fenerbah\u00e7e, Dutch side Feyenoord and Ukrainian unknowns FC Zorya Luhansk. Manager Jos\u00e9 Mourinho has not competed in this tournament since 2004, when he won the trophy then known as the UEFA Cup, with Porto. It\u2019s fair to say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18],"tags":[92,93,94,36],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-manchester-united","tag-europa-league","tag-fenerbahce","tag-feyenoord","tag-manchester-united"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}