All you need to know about the Europa Conference League Final

Olympiacos will face Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League final on Wednesday night, live on talkSPORT 2.

West Ham are reigning champions of UEFA’s third competition but they will lose that tag this week to the winner of the 2024 showpiece.

Greek giants Olympiacos cruised past Premier League side Aston Villa in the semi-finals, winning 6-2 across their two legs.

That comprehensive victory booked their place in the final where they will now face Italian opposition in Fiorentina.

The Serie A side beat Club Brugge 4-3 on aggregate and are now one win away from their first European trophy since 1961.

Olympiacos vs Fiorentina: talkSPORT coverage

The Europa League final will take place on Wednesday, May 29.

It will be played at the Agia Sophia Stadium, also known as OPAP Arena, in Nea Filadelfeia, Greece and will kick off at 8pm.

talkSPORT 2 will have live coverage of the game with commentary coming from Ian Danter and Andy Townsend.

talkSPORT.com will be running a live blog of all the action as well.

The final will also be broadcast live on TNT Sports in the UK.

Olympiakos and Fiorentina will meet for the very first time in Europe in the UEFA Conference League final – it will be the third final in the last two seasons of major European competition to see two teams meeting for the first time, after Fiorentina vs. West Ham in this competition last season and Manchester City vs. Internazionale in the 2022-23 UEFA Champions League final.
Olympiakos have lost six of their last seven matches in European competition against Italian opposition, with the exception being a 3-1 home win over Milan in the 2018-19 UEFA Europa League group stage; the Greek side have, however, only won more games in major European competition against English (12) and French (11) opponents than Italian (7).

Here is how both teams have made it to this week’s final…

Play-off

Last 16

Olympiacos have no new injury concerns for the final.

Striker Ayoub El Kaabi will start and look to back up his incredible performances against Aston Villa in the semi-finals.

As for Fiorentina, Ricardo Sottil should be the only absentee.

Luca Ranieri will be competing with Nikola Milenkovic and Lucas Martinez Quarta for a starting place at centre-back.

This will be just the sixth time Fiorentina have faced a Greek opponent in European competition, winning just one of the previous five (D3 L1), all of which have come in the UEFA Cup/Europa League group stage (1-0 vs. PAOK Salonika in 2014-15).
This will be Olympiakos’ first appearance in a major European final, 64 years and 259 days since their first ever outing in such competition against Milan in September 1959 in the European Cup first round (2-2 draw); that is the longest gap between a team’s first game and first final in major European competition history.

Olympiacos manager Jose Luis Mendilibar didn’t expect to go this far in the competition when he became boss.

He admitted: “When I came to Olympiacos, I didn’t expect we’d go so far in Europe.

“I was collecting info about the team. However, I slowly started believing that we could do well in the league and in Europe.

“It is a huge source of joy to come this far – for all of us who are trying every day on the pitch and, above all, for the fans of Olympiacos.”