AC Milan Striving for Europa League Football

Dante described Purgatorio as the middle ground between heaven and hell, a necessary place for the ascension into heaven. Now I am by no means the spiritual type, though i have a soft spot for Dante's inferno.  The problem is based on Dante's poem we have lived our inferno this season and the Europa League is the next step to reach the Paradise of CL football!?  If only it was that easy...if only this was true...

Regardless of what you think of Clarence Seedorf and whether this qualification will save his job is not really  part of this discussion.  My main concern is what qualifying for the Europa League would mean both positive and negative for AC Milan.  It is no secret that the Europa League is no picnic, travel to Russia in January and February for midweek matches on frozen pitches is no picnic, and few teams who endure the Thursday match cadence have the legs to be successful on the weekend.  15 matches is the schedule increase for the final rounds alone, it doesn't take into consideration the early August qualifying rounds that Milan would most likely be headed into.

Monetarily it isn't as big a boon as the CL either and if money is the issue then pushing for Europa may not be the answer, reducing wages is.  I don't believe Milan is in a position collectively reinvest each dollar earned from qualification to bolster the squad to do this. Yes the roster has a bit of excess fluff but shouldn't that be widdled down to save money!? One could argue that the youth could take this and run with it but the fact that Milan doesn't even adhere to the policy in the League Cup makes you wonder if that would make sense.

At the end of the day I understand this is still Europe and there is a romance to any tournament.  This is one also has a bit of Unicorn perspective to it as Milan has never won the UEFA Cup which has now become the Europa Cup.  Truth be told, I can care less, while Juve and Inter were piling up UEFA Cups we were busy doing something else...