Europa League final, Spurs vs Man Utd: Who needs it more – and who do rival fans want to win?

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This season’s Europa League finalists Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United have both endured historically woeful seasons on the domestic front.

Yet lifting the trophy in the Spanish city of Bilbao on Wednesday evening could completely change the mood at either Premier League club going into the summer and on into next season — it is 90 minutes (at least) that could potentially transform how their 2024-25 campaign is remembered.

The Athletic’s Mark Critchley, Elias Burke and Chris Weatherspoon assess which of the two managers, squads, fanbases and bank balances need this one more…

The Europa League final on The Athletic

Which of the two managers needs this more?

Ruben Amorim, Manchester United

Listen to Ruben Amorim and you might get the impression he could do without Champions League football next season (which United would get as Europa League winners). He has openly questioned whether or not it would be better to lose this final and spend a year outside European competition, as United have proved incapable of fighting on two fronts under him in the six months since his appointment.

More time on the training ground between matches would help the squad adapt to his methods — that’s the theory. But Amorim has also spoken about the need to spend in the transfer market, and the riches that winning the Europa League would bring could change United’s outlook for the summer window drastically.

It would also bolster his own position. Amorim has not come under anything like the same scrutiny as his Spurs counterpart Ange Postecoglou this season, there are no short-term concerns over his future, and he has been given the benefit of the doubt by supporters. But even he has accepted that will not last if United lose tonight and then show little sign of improvement next season.

Mark Critchley

Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham Hotspur

It’s the Premier League’s worst-kept secret that even success in the Europa League final may not be enough to save Postecoglou’s job… but it would do no harm in setting up a potential new chapter for him elsewhere.

Unlike Amorim, Postecoglou is not a young manager (he turns 60 in August) and, given his extremely unconventional journey through Australia, Greece, Japan and Scotland to reach the Premier League, may not be afforded the same licence to fail and rebound as his 40-year-old United counterpart. Finishing the season as the man who ended Tottenham’s infamous trophy drought dating back to 2008 will read much better on his job history than the fact he’s guided them to their worst finish in Premier League history.

With no official line from himself or any of the club’s representatives to confirm this will be his second and final season as Tottenham manager, irrespective of the result in Bilbao, it may also buy him the 2025-26 campaign to continue his project in north London. Spurs have recruited young under Postecoglou’s stewardship, and very few of their new players had Premier League and elite European experience when they were signed. 

Given his success in other leagues after being backed during difficult periods, perhaps a win against United tonight may convince the club’s decision-makers to persist with the Australian through a third summer transfer window. 

Elias Burke

(Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images)

Are either set of players worthy winners?

United

If Amorim has largely escaped criticism for United’s desperate performances in the 2024-25 Premier League, his players haven’t. There has long been a sense among supporters that this squad has let manager after manager down, even though there are only six first-teamers left at the club who were also part of the 2020-21 group — the last time United played in a Europa League final.

Bruno Fernandes, Amad and Harry Maguire were all present in Gdansk that night, and are the three to emerge from this campaign with the most credit. Fernandes, in particular, deserves more of it for carrying his team-mates on his back. Noussair Mazraoui should get a notable mention too, and others have impressed here and there, but most have either been inconsistent or have underwhelmed.

No player will be under more scrutiny than Rasmus Hojlund, who has scored twice in his past five games but has still looked bereft of confidence. Amorim has little choice but to start the 22-year-old up top tonight, as alternatives are either injured or ineligible. A new striker is a priority in the summer, but Hojlund’s record for United in the European competitions is decent. He and others who have disappointed could still end a difficult year on a high.

Mark Critchley

Spurs

For most of Tottenham’s squad, this season has probably been the most difficult of their careers.

A team many expected to compete again for a place in the Champions League via their final Premier League position suffered a winter collapse in the domestic top flight that they have not recovered from. With just one game remaining in the league season, it would not be a surprise to see them finish in 17th, their current position, effectively marking them as the worst side outside of the three relegated teams. The potential effects of such a catastrophic league campaign are unknown, but it’s perhaps a sore only victory in the Europa League can heal.

And for the significant portion of the squad who have spent weeks and months sidelined due to injury, it would be the reward for all that time spent helplessly watching their team-mates suffer. 

Given the extent of the injury crisis, winning this competition would truly be a squad accomplishment, with several academy talents playing important roles during the league phase and previously out-of-favour senior players stepping up in the knockout ties while Postecoglou’s typical starters were rehabilitating. 

Elias Burke

Which fanbase most deserves this happy ending to a painful season?

United

Since Tottenham’s last trophy in 2008, United have won four Premier League titles, a Champions League, two FA Cups, four League Cups, a Club World Cup and a Europa League. Even if we just limit ourselves to the so-called ‘banter era’ following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, it’s five major pieces of silverware in 12 years. Most clubs — Spurs included — would kill for that.

So United fans have had it good, even when they’ve had it (for them) bad. But no club is guaranteed success, and the rot that has long been spoken about at Old Trafford is now seeping through into results. United are about to record their lowest finish of the Premier League era, for the second consecutive year. 

Lose on Wednesday and they will spend a season out of Europe for only the second time since English clubs’ post-Heysel ban ended in 1990. The first time that happened, in 2014-15, they bounced straight back and qualified for the Champions League through a top-four finish. It’s hard to be confident that it would be the same again this time.

European trips are the highlight of many fans’ seasons. Winning in Bilbao would keep United’s followers going for one more year, at least.

Mark Critchley

United fans pre-match in Bilbao (Nick Potts/Getty Images)

Spurs

Nobody can question that Manchester United fans have been put through the wringer this season, but this one’s easy: Tottenham supporters are arguably the Premier League’s most tortured fanbase, relative to expectation.

Let’s not forget, it’s only 12 months since youth-team graduates Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo set United on their way to FA Cup final victory against local rivals Manchester City at Wembley, denying them the double — just about the best feeling you could possibly imagine as a supporter. That was United’s fifth post-Alex Ferguson trophy and their 13th since Spurs last lifted silverware in 2008.

For a club of Tottenham’s size and history, a 17-year wait for a trophy is too long. There have been seven semi-final and four final defeats since that League Cup triumph, and it’s about time Spurs fans felt the jubilation a cup final can bring, as opposed to the agony they’ve experienced in them during recent years.

Victory tonight would make all of it — the trophy drought, the 21 league defeats this season, the continued frustrations over the ownership — worth it… even if there’s an acceptance that 2025-26 must be considerably better.

Elias Burke

Financially speaking, who could most do with that prize money?

It is a byproduct of football’s relentless pursuit of the dollar, or euro in this instance, that this year’s Europa League final often feels to have been deemed more important for what might follow it than the glory of winning a trophy.

Today’s victors will get some silverware for their troubles – an occurrence Tottenham fans surely feel is long overdue – but this game is also, in effect, a play-off for a place in next season’s Champions League.

Why that spot is so coveted is obvious: both finalists need the cash. In United’s case, they continue to spend like a Champions League team even when such status has proven increasingly elusive; a loss in Bilbao would make next season the sixth in 12 where they’ve not played in UEFA’s premier club tournament.

United’s recent financial concerns are well-highlighted, not least by the swathe of redundancies undertaken since Sir Jim Ratcliffe arrived as co-owner in early 2024. Yet they’ve hardly cut their cloth in other areas. United have spent a further £274.5million on transfers this season and by the end of December owed a net £300.1m to other clubs in payments for past signings, the highest in England and a significant ongoing drain on an already squeezed cash position.

Faring little better in that regard are Spurs. Their £279.3million owed on transfers was a Premier League high at the end of last June, and they are another club who’ve spent heavily in recent years and are now feeling the impact of doing so. Their finances aren’t quite so troubling as United’s have become, but they’ve gone from being cash-rich to rather squeezed themselves, at least by their own recent standards. An uncharacteristic £35m share injection from owner ENIC was proof enough of that.

On offer this midweek is a bounty neither can afford to sniff at. Whoever wins this match will bank around £5million, on top of the £30m or so they’ve earned in the Europa League to date, as well as a little over £3m for qualifying to face the Champions League winners in August’s Super Cup.

The real financial prize would come later next season; consider United earned £53.8million via European matches during their last Champions League year, a season when they finished bottom of their group with one win in the six games – and one which came before UEFA introduced an even more lucrative new format.

In terms of estimating next year’s earnings from a Champions League spot, The Athletic project United will earn a minimum £77m across UEFA prize money, takings from at least four extra home games and an avoidance of a £10m haircut to their kit supplier deal with Adidas. That’s even if they lose every group game. We estimate Spurs’ minimum earnings would be a lower, but still healthy, £60m.

Each of these two finalists have £30million-plus annual interest payments to service, whether they travel as far south as Barcelona or only Brighton and Bournemouth next season. Between them, United and Spurs spent a net £942m on players in the three seasons before this one, each now boasting squads among the eight most costly in world football and, in United’s case last season, Europe’s seventh-highest wage bill.

Champions League, indeed.

Chris Weatherspoon

But what do other clubs’ fans think?

With two Premier League clubs competing in a European final for only the sixth time, The Athletic was curious to know which of United and Spurs the fans of other English clubs would be backing in today’s final.

We polled followers of the other 18 Premier League clubs on who they would rather win if they had to pick one or the other, and the results were… well, they were probably pretty much what you’d expect.

Overall, 68.4 per cent of those polled said they wanted Tottenham to win, with a victory for the north London club the preference for fans of 14 of the other sides. The only three fanbases who voted in favour of United were, perhaps unsurprisingly given football’s cross-London antipathy, Arsenal, Chelsea and West Ham. The only fanbase to show any signs of diplomacy was Brentford’s, who voted evenly for both clubs.

What is slightly more eye-catching is that as many as 48.1 per cent of the Chelsea supporters went for a Spurs win, while not a single Evertonian to respond was willing to entertain the prospect of United clinching the first trophy of the Amorim era.

(Top photo: Getty Images)

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