The Never Ending UEFA Cup Draws On

Some of our more alert readers might have noticed that we haven’t devoted much time or thought to the UEFA Cup. Europe’s second tournament is something we have a hard time focusing on because it involves so many teams that we know nothing about and it goes on seemingly forever.

The UEFA group play draw was made today with the remaining 40 teams divvied up into eight groups of five. The top three teams from each group will advance to the next round where they will be joined by the eight third place group finishers from the Champions League group play. So basically we have months more football just to get the field down to 32 teams, some of which we might actually know.

We can’t deny that as the field gets whittled down to manageable numbers and the knockout phase begins the UEFA Cup does become exciting if you are still able to remain interested after the months and months of it not being so exciting. You’ll almost never hear us agree with those who argue that there is too much football being played these days, but in the case of the UEFA Cup, less would be better.

Here’s the draw for the next round.

GROUP A
Auxerre
RANGERS
P Belgrade
Livorno
Maccabi Haifa

GROUP B
Bayer Leverkusen
Club Brugge
Besiktas
Dinamo Bucharest
TOTTENHAM

GROUP C
Sevilla
AZ Alkmaar
Slovan Liberec
Grasshopper
Braga

GROUP D
Parma
Lens
Heerenveen
Osasuna
Odense

GROUP E
Feyenoord
Basle
Wisla Krakow
BLACKBURN
Nancy

GROUP F
Ajax
Sparta Prague
Espanyol
Austria Wien
Zulte Waregem

GROUP G
Panathinaikos
Paris St Germain
Rapid Bucharest
Hapoel Tel Aviv
Mlada Boleslav

GROUP H
NEWCASTLE
Celta Vigo
Palermo
Fenerbahce
Eintracht Frankfurt

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Category: Europe