NYON, Switzerland (AP) — It is a rare win in modern soccer. A new and expanded competition that is widely popular with clubs and fans while earning praise for the organizer.
The Conference League's place in European soccer since launching in 2021 — and paying almost $300 million in prize money this season — is helping to keep its mostly unheralded clubs happy enough with UEFA to resist offers elsewhere.
On Friday, the third-tier men's club event took shape with the first draw for knockout playoffs. It's a new format the Champions League will also use when its group phase finishes in January.
The 16 teams placed from ninth to 24th in the single-league, 36-team Conference League standings that finished on Thursday were paired in a seeded bracket like a tennis tournament.
Most of the teams involved on Friday, like Ireland's Shamrock Rovers, will play European games in February for the first time. They are being kept in action after years of their international ambitions ending in August with exits from qualifying rounds for the Champions League and Europa League.
Rovers will face Molde of Norway in a two-leg playoff on Feb. 13 and 20 with the winner advancing to the round of 16. Waiting for them are Conference League leader Chelsea — which ended Rovers' unbeaten run on Thursday — third-placed Fiorentina and the other top eight teams in the standings.
The champion of Ireland already has earned a bonanza of 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in prize money from the Conference League's total fund of 285 million euros ($297 million). Most of the money goes to clubs where $5 million can make a big difference.
“You can actually try and invest in your squad knowing that there’s a realistic opportunity of progressing,” John Martin, the Shamrock Rovers CEO, told The Associated Press after the draw.
Playing Chelsea, even though losing 5-1 at Stamford Bridge, was “a game that Rovers supporters will remember in 50, 70, 100 years,” Martin said. "That’s the beauty of the competition, there’s a space for both of us. And we’re both still in it as well.”
Other playoff pairings included Copenhagen hosting European newcomer Heidenheim, Gent hosting Real Betis, and Celje of Slovenia playing at home first against Cypriot club APOEL.
Copenhagen has been a Champions League regular in recent years and APOEL was a surprise quarterfinalist in 2012. Both have found a safety net in the Conference League.
“I haven’t heard one single negative comment from the clubs,” UEFA deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti said of the competition ahead of making the draw. “We know that broadcasters are very happy, and if the broadcasters are happy it means their viewers are happy.”
Cyprus is the only country with three teams left in the competition and Friday’s draw set up a domestic derby between Omonoia and Pafos.
The most dramatic passage on Thursday to the knockout phase was for Molde, the Norwegian club that nurtured a teenage Erling Haaland.
Molde scored a stoppage-time goal to beat Mlada Boleslav 4-3 and rise from 27th to 23rd in the standings. That goal also eliminated Mlada, which dropped to 27th, and Hearts, which fell to 25th and was eliminated on the tiebreaker of total goals scored.
“I was in the match center and we were going crazy because the results were changing and teams were going up and down,” Marchetti said. “The format is delivering unpredictability."
The Champions League and Europa League have their draws for the knockout playoff rounds on Jan. 31, after completing their eight-round group phase that week.
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Mladá Boleslav's Martin Králik, left, clears the ball away from Molde's Kristian Eriksen during the UEFA Conference League soccer match between Molde and Mladá Boleslav at Asker Stadium, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, in Molde, Norway. (Svein Ove Ekornesvåg/NTB Scanpix via AP)
Shamrock Rovers' Roberto Lopes, center, and Chelsea's Harvey Vale shake hands at the end of the Europa Conference League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and Shamrock Rovers at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)
Shamrock Rovers' goalkeeper Leon Poehls, back, blocks a shot by Chelsea's Joao Felix during the Europa Conference League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and Shamrock Rovers at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana man convicted in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who vanished during a winter hike was sentenced to a maximum of 130 years in prison Friday in the case that’s long cast a shadow over the teens’ small hometown of Delphi.
Allen, 52, was convicted on Nov. 11 in the killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.
The special judge in the case, Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull sentenced Allen on two of the four murder counts and imposed the maximum of 65 years for each count, to be served consecutively. The sentencing hearing, which included victim impact statements from six relatives of the teens, lasted less than two hours.
After the hearing concluded, one of Allen’s defense attorneys, Jennifer Auger, told reporters they plan to appeal and seek a new trial.
“Thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims. What they went through was unimaginable,” Auger said. She added that the defense plans to give a more detailed statement later, “but today is not the day for that.”
The Associated Press left messages for Allen's attorneys Friday seeking additional comment on his sentence and their plans for an appeal.
Allen, who has maintained his innocence, had faced between 45 years and 130 years in prison in the killings of the Delphi teens, who were found dead in February 2017, their throats cut, one day after they vanished while hiking during a day off from school.
Allen also lived in Delphi and when he was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the killings, he was employed as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy only blocks from the county courthouse where he later stood trial. His weekslong trial came after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.
With Gull's long-running gag order in the case lifted at the end of Friday's sentencing, police and prosecutors held a news conference where they thanked investigators for their work that helped with Allen's arrest and prosecution.
“There is zero doubt that justice has been served and today is the day,” said Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett.
He and others singled out the work of a retired state government worker who volunteered in March 2017 to help police organize tips received as part of the investigation — and who discovered a key piece of information that led investigators to Allen.
Kathy Shank testified at trial that in September 2022 she found a misplaced “lead sheet” which stated that two days after German's and Williams’ bodies were found, a man contacted authorities and said he had been on the trail the afternoon the girls went missing. His name was listed incorrectly as Richard Allen Whiteman and marked “cleared,” Shank said.
She determined the man’s name was actually Richard Allen and recalled that a young girl had been on the trail at the same location and time and had seen a man.
“I thought there could be a correlation,” Shank told the court, adding that she notified officers of her find.
Liggett thanked Shank at Friday's news conference for her crucial discovery and for bringing it to investigators' attention.
“When she would come across something she didn’t know she would always bring that to an investigator and every time she brought us something and said, `Did you know this?’ we knew it — except for the tip that she brought us that got us here today," he said.
Gull, the special judge who oversaw Allen's trial, came from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County, as did the jury.
The seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 residents some 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.
Allen's trial came after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.
A relative dropped the teens off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders didn't arrive at the agreed pickup location and were reported missing that evening. Their bodies were found the next day in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.
In his closing arguments at Allen's trial, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen, armed with a gun, forced the youths off the hiking trail and had planned to rape them before a passing van made him change his plans and he cut their throats. McLeland said an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun.
An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury her analysis tied the round to Allen’s handgun.
McLeland said Allen was the man seen following the teens across the Monon High Bridge in a grainy cellphone video German had recorded. And he said Allen’s voice could be heard on that video telling the teens, “ Down the hill ″ after they crossed the bridge.
McLeland also noted that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the killings — in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
Allen’s defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could make a person delirious and psychotic.
Defense attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing trial arguments that no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the hiking trail or the bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. He also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence links Allen to the murder scene.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland speaks after the sentencing of Richard Allen in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter speaks after the sentencing of Richard Allen in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter speaks after the sentencing of Richard Allen in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Mike Patty, grandfather, of Liberty German, speaks after the sentencing of Richard Allen in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Mike Patty, grandfather, of Liberty German, speaks after the sentencing of Richard Allen in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Spectators line up to enter the Carroll County Courthouse for the sentencing of Richard Allen, convicted in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls , in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
FILE - Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter announces the arrest of Richard Allen for the murders of two teenage girls killed in 2017, during a news conference in Delphi, Ind., Oct. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
FILE - Officers escort Richard Allen out of the Carroll County Courthouse following a hearing, Nov. 22, 2022, in Delphi, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
