UEFA Intertoto Cup

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The UEFA Intertoto Cup is a summer football competition for European clubs that have not qualified for one of the main UEFA competitions (the Champions League and the UEFA Cup).

The Intertoto Cup replaced the International Football Cup (IFC), which was a competition organised by the football pools companies of central Europe to provide matches for their coupons during the summer months. In 1995 it was taken over by UEFA and opened up to clubs from across Europe. The cup does not have a single winner; instead there are three "finals", the winners of each of which are given entry to the following season's UEFA Cup. This makes the competition attractive to many clubs who see it as their only chance of qualifying for Europe.

Contents

1 Structure

2 Criticisms

3 Previous winners

3.1 International Football Cup
3.2 UEFA Intertoto Cup

4 Winners of competition by nation

5 External links

Structure

The competition has a total of five rounds. The first two rounds take place in mid June to early July, and feature teams from the smaller countires in Europe. From Round 3, which is in mid July, onwards, the teams from the larger nations enter. This leads to the semi-finals and finals. There are three 'finals', with the winner of each being given a small 'Intertoto Cup' trophy and, more importantly, entry into the UEFA Cup.

Criticisms

Because of the fact it is a competitive competition which takes place in July, many managers have criticised the competition because of it does not allow pre-season training, and clubs such as West Ham and Aston Villa have repeatedly claimed that entering the competition makes the players more fatigued by the end of the season. In England certainly, this can be seen by the fact that those teams who have entered the competition often have very good starts to the domestic season, but then tail off towards the end. However, this can be countered by the fact that Bordeaux won the Intertoto in 1995, and made it all the way to the UEFA Cup final in 1996.

Some countries do not take up their full allocation of Intertoto Cup places every year, as for many clubs the competition conflicts with their planned summer break and/or pre-season friendlies. Some clubs have claimed that the reduced summer break leaves their players more fatigued by the end of the following season. The cup is particularly unpopular in England, where it is sometimes referred to by derogatory names such as the "Intertwobob Cup" or "Intertinpot Cup".

Previous winners

International Football Cup

Season	Winner	Score	Runner-up
1961/62	AFC Ajax	4-2	Feyenoord
1962/63	SK Slovan Bratislava	0-0	Padova Missing image Italy_flag_large.png
	Padova Missing image Italy_flag_large.png	0-0	SK Slovan Bratislava
	SK Slovan Bratislava won 1-0 on aggregate
1963/64	SK Slovan Bratislava	1-0	Polonia Bytom
1964/65	Polonia Bytom	5-1	SC Leipzig
	SC Leipzig	3-0	Polonia Bytom
	Polonia Bytom won 5-4 on aggregate
1965/66	Lokomotiv Leipzig	4-0	IFK Norrköping
	IFK Norrköping	1-0	Lokomotiv Leipzig
	Lokomotiv Leipzig won 4-1 on aggregate
1966/67	Eintracht Frankfurt	1-1	Inter Bratislava
	Inter Bratislava	2-3	Eintracht Frankfurt
	Eintracht Frankfurt won 4-3 on aggregate
1968-1994	No Overall Winner