With the Champions league First round of a Group Stage behind football excitements this week don’t stop there as the Uefa Europa League is kicking on this Thursday. Competition known for many twist in which  teams from 24 different nations will look to reach the end and to lift the Europa league trophy.

Defending champions Sevilla qualified automatically from the Champions League but could still drop into the knockout rounds of this tournament if they finished third in their group which contains Juventus, Manchester City and Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Always a difficult competition to predict from the outset and as a result you can get some great odds on all the participating clubs to win the competition.

Here are a look at three of the favourites for the 2015-16 Europa League:

Borussia Dortmund

Thomas Tuchel’s side beat Wolfsberger AC of Austria 6-0 on aggregate in their first qualifying round before coming from 0-2 down to beat Odd BK from Norway 11-5 on aggregate.

Borussia Dortmund have also won all four of their opening German Bundesliga games under their new head coach, scoring 15 goals already. Including their German Cup win, the 2013 Champions League runners-up have scored an incredible 34 goals in nine competitive matches already this season.

The German side took the qualifying rounds seriously with very strong sides and certainly have the talent to go very far if they want to. They’re strong favourites as one of the toughest sides in the tournament and well worth a bet. It may depend on how close they can keep with Bayern Munich this season as to how seriously they take this competition in the latter stages.

Marco Reus, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Adnan Januzaj are just some of the exciting attacking talent Dortmund have on display this season.

Liverpool

After being eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage last season, Brendan Rodgers named virtually his strongest side for both legs of their knockout tie versus Beşiktaş in this competition last season. Unfortunately for him, his side lost to Slaven Bilić’s on penalties.

Liverpool will be competing strongly for a top four finish in the Premier League this season and their Northern Irish manager but nothing else can’t be expected from other competitions as he takes the FA Cup and League Cup seriously as well. He’s got quite a big squad now with all the money spent over the past two summers but whether they can be serious contenders in the Europa League (Group Stage) which starts this Thursday remains to be seen.

Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino certainly have the talent to push the Reds far in this tournament. We’ll have to see how the manager plays it. They’re the second favourites though.

Fiorentina

Semi-finalists from the last season but with a new manager in charge. Paulo Sousa has taken over from Vicenzo Montella for the 2015-16 campaign in which Fiorentina have picked up six points from their opening three league fixtures including a 2-0 win over AC Milan.

FC Basel may give them a tricky tie in the group stage but the Italian side should not have a problem progressing from their group that also contains Polish side Lech Poznań and Portuguese club Belenenses.

Borja Valero, Josip Iličić and Giuseppe Rossi are just some of the attacking players Fiorentina have on their books.

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