UEFA Cup
The UEFA Cup
The UEFA Cup is an international competition for European football teams organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The tournament is considered the second most important international European event after the UEFA Champions League.
Logistics
The final is played for the UEFA Cup trophy and the winning club keeps the cup till the next competition. At the end of their reign the club must return the cup but keeps a four-fifths size replica as a memento. UEFA regulations state that if a club wins the cup three times in a row or five times in total they keep the cup for good but this has not yet happened. The UEFA cup final is played at different European locations every year.
Clubs that are eligible to play are those that are in the leading positions behind the domestic top-flight champions, national cup winners, league cup winners from certain countries, the eleven winners of the UEFA Intertoto final matches and three clubs from the UEFA Fair Play League.
Ranking
Participating clubs qualify for the UEFA Cup based on their results in their home country national leagues. Qualification for the UEFA Cup is complex and is based on the UEFA team and league coefficients. This a system for ranking the European teams and gives the number of teams from each league that can take part in the event. The coefficient is calculated based on the results of league clubs over the previous five seasons with points awarded for wins and draws. Individual teams can gain entry through a number of different methods. Generally places are given to teams who finish as runners-up in top-level league European contests as well as the eventual cup winners. England and France are the only two countries that grant UEFA cup places to secondary cup winners.
Elimination
The competition is played out over several months as a series of elimination rounds during which teams play both home and away games and a point system is used to determine which teams advance to the next round. As the rounds progress teams that have automatically qualified for advanced rounds join those that are still in the contest. After the first proper round there are 40 clubs remaining and tournament continues with eight groups of five teams until the semi-finals.
History
The UEFA Cup began in 1971 as a replacement for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and Tottenham Hotspurs were the first cup winners. Initially the tournament had a rule that only one club from each city could compete but that was dropped in 1975 after Everton protested because although they qualified for the tournament they were to be barred entry because Liverpool had already qualified too. In 1999 the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup merged with the UEFA cup and became the same tournament.
Only four teams have managed to win their domestic league, domestic cup and the UEFA Cup all in the same season. The teams and years of their accomplishment are IFK Göteborg in 1982, Galatasaray in 2000, F.C. Porto in 2003 and CSKA Moscow in 2005. Galatasaray and Sevilla are the only two teams to have won the cup without losing a single game along the way.
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