Who Needs An Off-Season? Welcome to the Last Intertoto Cup

There are lots of firsts in professional football tournaments. Real Madrid will always be the first winners of the European Cup. Tottenham can claim the first UEFA Cup. But aside from the old Cup Winners’ Cup (won first by Fiorentina and last by Lazio), there aren’t many teams that can claim to have won the last cup of its kind.

This year, though, someone will win the last Intertoto Cup, before the competition is scrapped next season in favor of a longer qualification process for the UEFA Cup. And since Intertoto play has already begun, kiss that long, boring off-season goodbye. Welcome back to European club football.

Granted, the giants of Europe are still resting, except for those with players at Euro 2008. This is the time for the minnows. Here are a few of the stories from the first leg of the first round of Intertoto Cup play.

Bohemians Wrap It Up Early: 118-year-old Bohemian F.C. of Ireland started their season off with a bang this week, beating Welsh side Rhyl 5-1. They have to survive the trip back to Wales, but barring a disaster, they should be through to the second round, where they will face either an Icelandic or Latvian side.

Elfsborg’s Road Warriors: Sweden’s Elfsborg, former home of Swedish Euro 2008 player Anders Svensson, took care of business early as well, beating HB Tórshavn of the Faroe Islands 4-1 on the road. They’ll almost certainly move on to face SPL side Hibernian, in a battle with Scandinavian rivalry undertones. Hibs’ manager, Mixu Paatelainen, is Finnish, and the third-leading goalscorer in the history of the Finland national side.

Who’s Going to Have Oblast?: The winner of tomorrow’s second leg between Ettelbruck of Luxembourg and Lokomotivi Tblisi of Georgia will move on to face the Russian Intertoto side, Saturn Moscow Oblast. As if that name wasn’t awesome enough, their nickname is the “Inoplanetyane”, the Aliens.

Here are all the scores (separated by UEFA region):
Southern-Mediterranean Region
Besa Kavaje (Albania) 0-0 Ethnikos Achnas (Cyprus)
Čelik Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) 3-2 Grbalj (Montenegro)
Rijeka (Croatia) 0-0 Renova (Macedonia)
Hibernians (Malta) 0-3 Gorica (Slovenia)

Central-East Region
Zhetysu (Kazakhstan) 1-2 Budapest Honvéd (Hungary)
MIKA (Armenia) 2-2 Tiraspol (Moldova)
Neftchi Baku (Azerbaijan) 2-0 Nitra (Slovakia)
Cracovia (Poland) 1-2 Shakhtyor Soligorsk (Belarus)
Etzella Ettelbruck (Luxembourg) 0-0 Lokomotivi Tbilisi (Georgia)

Northern Region
Ekranas (Lithuania) 1-0 Narva Trans (Estonia)
HB Tórshavn (Faroe Islands) 1-4 Elfsborg (Sweden)
Bohemian (Ireland) 5-1 Rhyl (Wales)
Lisburn Distillery (Northern Ireland) 2-3 TPS Turku (Finland)
Riga (Latvia) 1-2 Fylkir (Iceland)

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Category: Europe, Tournaments, UEFA Cup