UEFA Cup Overview

As I men­tioned last week, we’re going to take a look at the UEFA Cup, this com­pan­ion com­pe­ti­tion to the Cham­pi­ons League. The UEFA Cup evolved from the old Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which was founded in 1955, two weeks after the found­ing of the Euro­pean Cham­pion Clubs’ Cup.

The orig­i­nal tour­na­ment lasted three years, with matches timed to coin­cide with trade fairs and involved teams from Barcelona, Basle, Birm­ing­ham, Copen­hagen, Frank­furt, Lau­sanne, Leipzig, Lon­don, Milan and Zagreb. Barcelona, using play­ers purely from FC Barcelona, beat a Lon­don rep­re­sen­ta­tive side 8–2 on aggre­gate in the final.

In 1972 the tour­na­ment was renamed the UEFA Cup to reflect that the com­pe­ti­tion was now run by UEFA and no longer asso­ci­ated with the trade fairs. Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur were the ini­tial win­ners of the renamed competition.

The cur­rent UEFA Cup tour­na­ment is open to teams fin­ish­ing in lead­ing posi­tions behind the cham­pi­ons in their domes­tic top flights, the win­ners of national cup com­pe­ti­tions, the win­ners of the League Cup in cer­tain coun­tries, the eleven win­ners of the final matches in the UEFA Inter­toto Cup, and three clubs from UEFA’s Fair Play League.

The tour­na­ment starts with three knock­out qual­i­fy­ing rounds held in July and August. Par­tic­i­pants from asso­ci­a­tions ranked 18 and lower enter the first qual­i­fy­ing round, and par­tic­i­pants from asso­ci­a­tions ranked 9–18 join them in the sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing round. In addi­tion, three places in the first qual­i­fy­ing round are reserved for the Fair Play win­ners, and eleven places in the sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing round are reserved for the UEFA Inter­toto Cup winners.

The tour­na­ment used to be a straight knock­out com­pe­ti­tion but the for­mat was changed in 2004/05, how­ever, when for the first time a group stage was intro­duced. Win­ners of the qual­i­fy­ing rounds join teams from the asso­ci­a­tions ranked 1–13 in the first knock­out round. In addi­tion, losers in the third qual­i­fy­ing round of the Cham­pi­ons League also enter this round, and another place is reserved for the UEFA Cup title-holders. There are 80 teams total in this round.

After the first knock­out round, the 40 sur­vivors enter a group phase, with the clubs being drawn into eight groups of five each. Unlike the Cham­pi­ons League group phase, the UEFA Cup group phase is played in a sin­gle round-robin for­mat, with each club play­ing two home and two away games. The top three teams in each group advance, where they are joined by the eight third-place teams in the Cham­pi­ons League group phase. The win­ners, runners-up and third-placed teams from each sec­tion advance to the last 32 where they are joined by the eight third-placed clubs from the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League group stage. Here, the tra­di­tional two-match knock­out for­mat resumes, until the final.

After the group stage there is a win­ter break. From this point, knock­out play resumes, with two-legged ties lead­ing to the one-off final, which is held at a neu­tral ground meet­ing UEFA’s cri­te­ria for a four star sta­dium. This sea­son The City of Man­ches­ter Sta­dium, which seats 47,000 fans, will stage the 2007/08 UEFA Cup final on May 14th 2008.

Here are the matchups for the first knock­out round which will be played over two legs on Sep­tem­ber 20th and Octo­ber 4th 2007. I think there are some dyna­mite match-ups that were tough to pick a win­ner for, espe­cially the Lens — Copen­hagen fix­ture. In the end, I think Copenhagen’s Euro­pean expe­ri­ence will come through. In what would be an upset I think that Crvena Zvezda could get knocked out by Pol­ish side Gro­clin Dyskobo­lia. The Serbs have been in tur­moil so far this sea­son and went so far as to fire coach Boško Djurovski and replace him with Milo­rad Kosanovic. The goals have been in short sup­ply for the Ser­bian side but they are hop­ing that recently signed striker Nenad Jestro­vic, who scored 55 goals in 79 appear­ances for Ander­lecht dur­ing a four-year spell with the Bel­gian side, will bol­ster a for­ward line that has been poor in the fin­ish­ing department.

Ajax have been handed a tricky tie against Dinamo Zagreb but I expect them to come through. The FC Twente — Getafe tie also looks promis­ing but I think the Span­ish side is just a bit stronger at the moment. All of the Eng­lish clubs involved (Tot­ten­ham, Ever­ton, Bolton, Black­burn) have received favourable ties and should advance to the group stage.

(My picks to advance are high­lighted)
FC Midtjyl­land (Den­mark) v Loko­mo­tiv Moscow (Rus­sia)
FC Gronin­gen (Nether­lands) v Fiorentina (Italy)
Rabot­nicki Kometal (Mace­do­nia) v Bolton (Eng­land)
AEK Athens (Greece) v SV Red Bull (Aus­tria)
Nurn­berg (Ger­many) v Rapid Bucaresti (Roma­nia)
Ever­ton (Eng­land) v FC Met­al­ist Kharkiv (Ukraine)
Zenit St Peters­burg (Rus­sia) v Stan­dard Liege (Bel­gium)
Bayer Lev­erkusen (Ger­many) v Uniao Leiria (Por­tu­gal)
Vil­lar­real (Spain) v BATE (Belarus)
FC Sion (Switzer­land) v Galatasaray (Turkey)
Atletico Madrid (Spain) v Kay­seri Erciye (Turkey)
Bor­deaux (France) v Tam­pere United (Fin­land)
Panathi­naikos (Greece) v Art­media Bratisl (Slo­va­kia)
Sparta Prague (Czech Repub­lic) v Odense BK (Den­mark)
FC Zurich (Switzer­land) v Empoli (Italy)
Sochaux (France) v Pan­io­n­ios (Greece)
Rapid Vienna (Aus­tria) v Ander­lecht (Bel­gium)
Pacos Fer­reira (Por­tu­gal) v AZ (Nether­lands)
Sam­p­do­ria (Italy) v AaB Alborg (Den­mark)
Spar­tak Moscow (Rus­sia) v BK Hacken (Swe­den)
Ham­marby (Swe­den) v Braga (Por­tu­gal)
Larissa (Greece) v Black­burn (Eng­land)
Mlada Boleslav (Czech Repub­lic) v Palermo (Italy)
Dinamo Zagreb (Croa­tia) v Ajax (Nether­lands)
Rennes (France) v Loko­mo­tiv Sofia (Bul­garia)
SK Brann (Nor­way) v Club Brugge (Bel­gium)
Bay­ern Munich (Ger­many) v Bele­nenses (Por­tu­gal)
Aberdeen (Scot­land) v Dnipro (Ukraine)
Heeren­veen (Nether­lands) v Hels­ing­borgs IF (Swe­den)
Toulouse (France) v CSKA Sofia (Bul­garia)
Ham­burg (Ger­many) v Litex Lovech (Bul­garia)
FK Sara­jevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) v Basle (Switzer­land)
FK Aus­tria Magna (Aus­tria) v Valerenga (Nor­way)
AIK Solna (Swe­den) v Hapoel Tel Aviv (Israel)
Aris Salonika (Greece) v Real Zaragoza (Spain)
Dinamo Bucuresti (Roma­nia) v IF Elfs­borg (Swe­den)
Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur (Eng­land) v Anortho­sis Fam­a­gusta (Cyprus)
Lens (France) v FC Copen­hagen (Den­mark)
Getafe (Spain) v FC Twente (Nether­lands)
Gro­clin Dyskobo­lia (Poland) v Crvena Zvezda (Serbia)