5th season of Europe's secondary club football tournament organised by UEFA
1975–76 UEFA Cup
Anfield hosted the first leg of the final.
Tournament details
Dates
14 September 1975 – 19 May 1976
Teams
64
Final positions
Champions
Liverpool (2nd title)
Runners-up
Club Brugge
Tournament statistics
Matches played
126
Goals scored
384 (3.05 per match)
Attendance
2,744,090 (21,778 per match)
Top scorer(s)
Ruud Geels (Ajax) 11 goals
← 1974–75
1976–77 →
International football competition
The 1975–76 UEFA Cup was the fifth season of the UEFA Cup, the third-tier club football competition organised by UEFA. The final was played over two legs at Anfield, Liverpool, England and at the Olympiastadion, Bruges, Belgium. It was won by Liverpool of England, who defeated Club Brugge of Belgium by an aggregate result of 4–3 to claim their second UEFA Cup title.
This was the first of only two times in the history of the UEFA Cup, its unofficial predecessor Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, or its successor UEFA Europa League where both finalists won their national championship in the same season. Until then, this had only happened twice in the European Cup, and it would only happen once in the European Cup Winners Cup.
Club Brugge was the first Belgian team to reach a UEFA Cup final, six years after Anderlecht also reached the final in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, its predecessor tournament. The final's first leg was the last major final held at Anfield in one of the three premier European club championships, although the stadium would also host two UEFA Super Cup legs in later finals.
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participate in the 1975–76 UEFA Cup. The original allocation scheme was as follows:
3 associations have four teams qualify.
3 associations have three teams qualify.
18 associations have two teams qualify.
7 associations have one team qualify.
The Soviet Union and Sweden were the two associations selected to have an extra third birth for this season, while the Netherlands and Austria went back to two qualified teams.
Wales: There was no national league in Wales before 1992 and the only competition organised by the Football Association of Wales was the Welsh Cup so Wales had just a single participant in European competitions, the winner (or best placed Welsh team as several English teams also competed) of the Welsh Cup which competed in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup.
Albania: Albanian teams were absent from European competition from 1973 to 1978 due to the international isolation of the country during the communist rule of Enver Hoxha.[1]Vllaznia would have qualified for the UEFA Cup by league position.
Teams
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for competition:
TH: Title holders
CW: Cup winners
CR: Cup runners-up
LC: League Cup winners
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.: League position
P-W: End-of-season European competition play-offs winners
England: At the end of the 1974–75 Football League season in April, the Football Association still applied the old Inter-Cities Fairs Cup ruling of 'one city, one team' to determine the teams that qualified for the UEFA Cup. As a result, Everton was bypassed for the final English birth, as the city of Liverpool was already represented by second placed Liverpool, and Stoke City was nominated for the spot after finishing fifth. However, UEFA gave a ultimatum to the English Football League in order for teams to qualify without geographical limitations, warning that English teams would not be accepted in European competitions otherwise. On 7 June 1975, the EFL formally confirmed Everton as the recipient of the fourth UEFA Cup spot.[2]
West Germany: The fourth UEFA Cup spot for West Germany was not awarded to the fourth best team not qualified for the European Cup or the European Cup Winners' Cup, which was Fortuna Dusseldorf, as it was common practice. Instead, this place was awarded to Duisburg, who had been runners-up in the 1974–75 DFB-Pokal.
Hungary:Vasas, who had finished 6th in the Hungarian league, qualified for the UEFA Cup by winning the Liberation Cup on its 30th anniversary. The tournament had not provided a European spot before, and would not do it ever since.[3]
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches took place on Tuesdays. In the first round, three first leg matches were played on a Thursday, and both legs of the match-up between MSV Duisburg and Enosis Neon Paralimni FC were played over three days in West Germany, with the first leg being held on a Sunday.
Lazio refused to play for security reasons, claiming it would be impossible to play due to political demonstrations following the execution in Spain of five ETA and FRAP members on 27 September on terrorism charges. UEFA awarded Barcelona a 3–0 victory, ruling those three goals were not applicable for the away goals rule.
^McCracken, Craig (15 October 2015). "Albania's history in European football: beards and bad behaviour in the Balkans". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
^"Everton to replace Stoke in UEFA Cup". New Sunday Times. Kuala Lumpur: New Straits Times Press. Reuters. 8 June 1975. p. 15. Archived from the original on 7 March 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
^"Sport - Labdarúgás - Felszabadulási Kupa - Vasas-Újpesti Dózsa". Nemzeti Archívum (in Hungarian). Retrieved 23 May 2024.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to UEFA Cup 1975-76.
1975–76 All matches UEFA Cup – season at UEFA website
Official Site
Results at RSSSF.com
All scorers 1975–76 UEFA Cup according to protocols UEFA