It’s a common enough question, but the problem is that the commonly given answers, “the draw is fixed” or “it’s Spurs”, are pretty ignorant and useless. There are, in fact, a handful of reasons why it seems like Spurs always have to travel immense distances that do not involve a corrupt Platini. (Though he is corrupt…)
1. Negativity and Confirmation biases
Simply put, melty Spurs fans tend to remember the bad and not the good. The far and not the close. So they cling to the fluke of last year, where we had to travel a statistically inordinate amount, to “prove” somehow that we always get properly rogered in the Europa League. But what about that little trip we made to Ireland we made a few years ago? Or our visit to Hearts? I seem to recall people complaining about the trip to Scotland precisely because it wasn’t exotic enough.
2. UEFA’s (not your travel agent’s) Europe is big
The UEFA competitions have clubs participating in them from a continent-sized, well, continent. Large amounts of space are covered, and that means lots of travel time. This year, the most northern club (HJK) is 2893 km from the most southern club (Apollon Limassol). The most eastern club (Qarabağ) is 4985 km from the most western (Estoril). Those are some serious distances that should put the distances Spurs will have to travel into a bit of perspective.
3. Spurs are victims of their own success
The pots in the Europa League draw are determined based on UEFA coefficient. Simply put, the better your club is, the less likely it is that they will be drawn against good clubs. Recently (the coefficient only considers the past five years), successful clubs have mostly been Western European, just like Spurs. We can see this mathematically:
In pot 1, clubs are, on average, 1272 km away from Spurs. The comparative nearness of Lille (248 km) and Eindhoven (383 km) along with the hauls to the former Soviet Union (Metalist: 2533 km, Dinamo Kyiv: 2127 km) explain why the standard deviation is 685 km. For a frame of reference, 1272 km is the distance from London to northern Italy, Slovakia, or even eastern Spain. Should we have drawn from a club in pot 1, we could have assumed that we would not travel terribly far. And that is precisely what Everton did, drawing Lille. Of course, if we were to have to draw a club in pot 1, it would be a difficult club to play!
In pot 2, clubs are, on average, 1520 km from London, with the standard deviation now soaring to 1050 km. We could have traveled as little as 229 km to Brugge or as many as 3226 km to Trabzonspor. Instead, we travel 2480 km to Beşiktaş. Far, sure, but two clubs are farther still (Dnipro joins Trabzonspor), and a third is a wash (Panathinaikos). Think of it this way: we were assigned a number at random between 1 and 12, and we got 10.
Unlike the previous pot, pot 3 actually has many clubs that are rather close to London, bringing the average distance down to 1029 km (Everton not included in the calculation). They are also clubs without a lot of recent (if any) European success, like Guingamp or Saint-Étienne. Here we truly did get the business, and conspiracy minded people will certainly crow that it must mean something that we got the farthest team from London, Partizan. But Belgrade (1691 km) is not even 100 km farther from London than Lisbon (1606 km), and I’m certain no one would have complained about the trip to watch Spurs take on Estoril.
But pot 4 shows the true spread of the Europa League. Made up largely of minnows, the average distance from London to one of these clubs is 2040 km. That’s a trip to Romania. And Spurs got the fifth furthest club in Asteras. But realistically, any club in this draw other than AaB or Lokeren would have felt like a massive distance, considering the rest of the clubs are from Eastern Europe (or beyond).
In three tries, Spurs got a club that exceeded the average distance all three times. That’s like flipping a coin heads three times in a row: difficult (12.5% chance), but not unrealistic. Of course, getting three close clubs would have been as unlikely.
And among those above-average-distance clubs, we drew the farthest once, the middle-farthest once, and the nearly least-farthest once. In other words, reasonably distributed.
4. London isn’t the center of the universe
London isn’t the center of Europe. Or the UK. Or even England. London is in the northwestern corner of Europe, and nearly any match against European competition will involve a substantial bit of travel. The average distance for a club from London (Everton included) is 1454 km. Warsaw is fewer than 1454 km from London.
The middle point of all of the clubs participating in this year’s Europa League Group Stage is in central Austria. If you don’t want to travel a lot, you should be a fan of Salzburg or Slovan Bratislava, which are rather centrally located and would not have to travel far in any direction no matter whom they drew.
The map below shows the geographical distributions of all of the pots. Pot 1 is blue, pot 2 is pink, pot 3 is green, and pot 4 is azure. Similarly, the stars show the geographic middle points of each pot, with white the center of the Europa League as a whole. WHL is the white circle with a spot.
The blue star shows the dominance of Western Europe at the top of the UEFA coefficients, and the azure star shows how pot 4 is made up of eastern clubs. The green star reveals the western minnows that make up pot 3, and the pink star shows the top-tier eastern clubs in the Europa League.
In conclusion, we may look at the map and lick our lips with excitement over seeing Spurs play Benelux clubs, but the chances of that happening are as remote. In fact, if we compare the clubs we did draw, they are all more or less as far away from that white star (the statistical middle of all of the clubs) as White Hart Lane is. It’s not a super draw, but it could have been worse.
And again, if you don’t like distances, Red Bull probably needs some fans.
1. Negativity and Confirmation biases
Simply put, melty Spurs fans tend to remember the bad and not the good. The far and not the close. So they cling to the fluke of last year, where we had to travel a statistically inordinate amount, to “prove” somehow that we always get properly rogered in the Europa League. But what about that little trip we made to Ireland we made a few years ago? Or our visit to Hearts? I seem to recall people complaining about the trip to Scotland precisely because it wasn’t exotic enough.
2. UEFA’s (not your travel agent’s) Europe is big
The UEFA competitions have clubs participating in them from a continent-sized, well, continent. Large amounts of space are covered, and that means lots of travel time. This year, the most northern club (HJK) is 2893 km from the most southern club (Apollon Limassol). The most eastern club (Qarabağ) is 4985 km from the most western (Estoril). Those are some serious distances that should put the distances Spurs will have to travel into a bit of perspective.
3. Spurs are victims of their own success
The pots in the Europa League draw are determined based on UEFA coefficient. Simply put, the better your club is, the less likely it is that they will be drawn against good clubs. Recently (the coefficient only considers the past five years), successful clubs have mostly been Western European, just like Spurs. We can see this mathematically:
In pot 1, clubs are, on average, 1272 km away from Spurs. The comparative nearness of Lille (248 km) and Eindhoven (383 km) along with the hauls to the former Soviet Union (Metalist: 2533 km, Dinamo Kyiv: 2127 km) explain why the standard deviation is 685 km. For a frame of reference, 1272 km is the distance from London to northern Italy, Slovakia, or even eastern Spain. Should we have drawn from a club in pot 1, we could have assumed that we would not travel terribly far. And that is precisely what Everton did, drawing Lille. Of course, if we were to have to draw a club in pot 1, it would be a difficult club to play!
In pot 2, clubs are, on average, 1520 km from London, with the standard deviation now soaring to 1050 km. We could have traveled as little as 229 km to Brugge or as many as 3226 km to Trabzonspor. Instead, we travel 2480 km to Beşiktaş. Far, sure, but two clubs are farther still (Dnipro joins Trabzonspor), and a third is a wash (Panathinaikos). Think of it this way: we were assigned a number at random between 1 and 12, and we got 10.
Unlike the previous pot, pot 3 actually has many clubs that are rather close to London, bringing the average distance down to 1029 km (Everton not included in the calculation). They are also clubs without a lot of recent (if any) European success, like Guingamp or Saint-Étienne. Here we truly did get the business, and conspiracy minded people will certainly crow that it must mean something that we got the farthest team from London, Partizan. But Belgrade (1691 km) is not even 100 km farther from London than Lisbon (1606 km), and I’m certain no one would have complained about the trip to watch Spurs take on Estoril.
But pot 4 shows the true spread of the Europa League. Made up largely of minnows, the average distance from London to one of these clubs is 2040 km. That’s a trip to Romania. And Spurs got the fifth furthest club in Asteras. But realistically, any club in this draw other than AaB or Lokeren would have felt like a massive distance, considering the rest of the clubs are from Eastern Europe (or beyond).
In three tries, Spurs got a club that exceeded the average distance all three times. That’s like flipping a coin heads three times in a row: difficult (12.5% chance), but not unrealistic. Of course, getting three close clubs would have been as unlikely.
And among those above-average-distance clubs, we drew the farthest once, the middle-farthest once, and the nearly least-farthest once. In other words, reasonably distributed.
4. London isn’t the center of the universe
London isn’t the center of Europe. Or the UK. Or even England. London is in the northwestern corner of Europe, and nearly any match against European competition will involve a substantial bit of travel. The average distance for a club from London (Everton included) is 1454 km. Warsaw is fewer than 1454 km from London.
The middle point of all of the clubs participating in this year’s Europa League Group Stage is in central Austria. If you don’t want to travel a lot, you should be a fan of Salzburg or Slovan Bratislava, which are rather centrally located and would not have to travel far in any direction no matter whom they drew.
The map below shows the geographical distributions of all of the pots. Pot 1 is blue, pot 2 is pink, pot 3 is green, and pot 4 is azure. Similarly, the stars show the geographic middle points of each pot, with white the center of the Europa League as a whole. WHL is the white circle with a spot.
The blue star shows the dominance of Western Europe at the top of the UEFA coefficients, and the azure star shows how pot 4 is made up of eastern clubs. The green star reveals the western minnows that make up pot 3, and the pink star shows the top-tier eastern clubs in the Europa League.
In conclusion, we may look at the map and lick our lips with excitement over seeing Spurs play Benelux clubs, but the chances of that happening are as remote. In fact, if we compare the clubs we did draw, they are all more or less as far away from that white star (the statistical middle of all of the clubs) as White Hart Lane is. It’s not a super draw, but it could have been worse.
And again, if you don’t like distances, Red Bull probably needs some fans.
