Cup for the cupless part 2

Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger
Archive

Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger brings us the second part of his exhaustive history of Europe's least popular and lesser known club competition - the Intertoto Cup. Click here for part one.

In the mid-90s, UEFA - always the haven of philanthropy - finally decided to rescue the Intertoto Cup, maybe because they felt a tad embarrassed by this summer extravaganza that didn't seem to be going anywhere.

From 1995 on, the winners (note the plural) would be allowed entry into the UEFA Cup. In other words: about thirty years after UEFA had threatened to ban participants in the Intertoto Cup from their own competitions, they now rewarded the best of those renegade teams with lucrative starting places.

How time, and a little money to be made on the side, can alter your perception.

In any case, the 1995 Intertoto Cup, now renamed UEFA Intertoto Cup, was all of a sudden a quite enticing thing. Whereas only 40 teams had competed in the previous year's edition - and not a single one from Spain, Italy or England -, there were now 59 sides eager and willing to curtail their summer holidays, four Bundesliga teams and three Premiership clubs among them.

Oops, did I say 'eager'? Not quite. The clubs were asked to register for the UI Cup during the winter of '94, a solid six months before the games would begin.

And as those matches drew nearer, the clubs' initial enthusiasm rapidly waned, especially when it was announced that the thing would kick off as early as June 24 - that is, half a week before the German season officially ended with the Cup final!

Suddenly, even the slim chance to earn a place in the UEFA Cup was no longer enough to keep the teams interested. Bayer Leverkusen had registered, but then their coach Erich Ribbeck realised he would have next to no pre-season preparation and didn't mince words: 'Every manager who supports this competition deserves to be fired.'

Leverkusen tried to withdraw from the cup, as did most of the British teams, but in April of 1995 UEFA declared they would severely punish any club that attempted to sneak out the back door. (Oh, how they were grinning in Italy and Spain.)

But of course there was another way around this problem. UEFA could force the clubs to appear, but not to field their best players. And so Spurs, for instance, went with a bunch of reserve players and youngsters.

It cost them dearly on July 22, 1995: in front of 6,000 fans, Cologne dismantled the visitors from Tottenham 8-0. A German newspaper said the English looked like 'an amateur team playing in stolen Spurs shirts', but the result is now in the record books - and the match was shown live on German television.

On the strength of this mauling, Cologne made the round of the last sixteen, together with the other three German teams.

'The Bundesliga dominates the UIC!' trumpeted the country's biggest football magazine, and Cologne declared they had already earned 600,000 German Marks from this supposedly silly tournament.

Karlsruhe's coach Winfried Schaefer said: 'My attitude as regards this cup has done a complete turnaround. I now await the draw with my heart beating faster.'

But that was as good as it got that year. Austria's Innsbruck knocked out Cologne and Leverkusen. Girondins Bordeaux of France, featuring Zinedine Zidane, eliminated Frankfurt and then Karlsruhe, qualified for the UEFA Cup and went all the way to the final, which was lost against Bayern. The other team besides Bordeaux to survive were Strasbourg, also representing France.

I mention this because the French clubs would go on to do themselves proud in the Intertoto Cup. From 1996 on, UEFA allowed three teams into the UEFA Cup, and each season you could almost bet (this cup was about betting, remember?) one of them would come from Ligue 1: Guingamp in 1996, the Grand Slam of Bastia and Lyon and Auxerre in 1997, Montpellier in 1999, Paris Saint-Germain and Troyes in 2001, Lille in 2004. Together with the two sides from 1995, that makes ten French clubs that joined the UEFA Cup via this detour.

During the same span, Germany had only six successful contestants (Karlsruhe in 1996, Bremen in 1998, Stuttgart in 2000 and 2002, Schalke in 2003 and 2004).

Am I being unfair in saying "only six"? Isn't the difference between ten French teams and six German ones merely marginal? I don't think so.

For many years, we used to think that the big teams from the top leagues have a head start over Bundesliga sides due to their filled coffers, and we accepted that a really top-notch team from, say, France or Portugal or Sweden or any other seemingly lesser league could hold their own against a strong Bundesliga XI - on a good day.

But the small Intertoto Cup could have and should have opened our eyes earlier, long before the European drought that began after Bayern's win in the Champions League.

Year in and year out, we sent decent clubs into the competition - but the eventual winners tended to come from elsewhere, especially after Italy and Spain joined in the fun in 1998.

And with the exception of 1999, when Juventus swallowed their pride, took part and got through, those winners didn't carry impressive names.

I mean, nothing against Montpellier and Troyes, Perugia and Udinese, Fulham and West Ham, but these are clubs our teams should be able to compete with. Let alone with Villareal, who won in 2002. And 2003. And 2004.

Well, who knows, maybe the Bundesliga can straighten this matter out over the next few weeks. Yet it seems doubtful. Dortmund have already been thrown out by Sigma Olomouc and Wolfsburg face an uphill struggle at Lens (from France!) on Wednesday.

That leaves Hamburg, who now face Olomouc and whose potential opponents in one of the finals are Valencia. I know I'm not offering much in the way of optimism, but there's no way around it - the Intertoto Cup has me presume that, five days before the start of the new Bundesliga season, we have to prepare for another very difficult European campaign.

And before you call me grumpy, check out the supplement that came with last Friday's edition of Germany's biggest and best broadsheet.

Five of our most noted writers took a hard look at the league and had this to say: "It's got the most refined stadia, the best attendance, the most expensive VIP boxes, the greenest pitches, the best atmosphere, the most powerful business managers. And the worst teams in a long time."

Jeez, those fellows make me look like a jolly chap sporting rose-tinted spex. Never mind. Cheer up!

Uli's seminal history of German football, Tor!, is available online.

Also available: Uli's new book Flutlicht und Schatten for all you German scholars to gen up on the history of the European Cup.

Any thoughts on this article? Email us

Adjust Font Size:

Check out the latest offers in the Soccernet Store