No team from West Germany had ever won the UEFA Cup, or its unofficial predecessor Inter-Cities Fairs Cup before Borussia's first conquest, which came two years after reaching the final in 1973. In that edition, both teams had already faced in the semi-finals, which ended with the same aggregate score. For the first time since the 1966 edition of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, no English team reached the final.
Association team allocation
A total of 63 teams from 30 UEFA member associations participate in the 1974–75 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 Netherlands and Austria were the two associations selected to have an extra third birth for this season, while Scotland and Belgium 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]Partizani would have qualified for the UEFA Cup by league position.
Cyprus: Due to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which took place during the summer of 1974, all Cypriot teams withdrew from European competitions after the first round draws were held.
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
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 Kaiserslautern, as it was common practice. Instead, this place was awarded to Hamburg, who had been runners-up in the 1973–74 DFB-Pokal.
Poland: All spots for European competition were decided with three matchdays left in the league, which was interrupted at that point due to the scheduling of the 1974 FIFA World Cup. As the third-placed team at the time of matchday 27, Legia Warsaw earned the second UEFA Cup spot, but it would later finish fourth behind Stal Mielec.
Cyprus:Pezoporikos Larnaca had already been drawn in the UEFA Cup against Dukla Prague before the mass withdrawal of all Cypriot teams, as a result of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The match-up was declared as a walk-over win for Dukla Prague.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the first round, both legs of the match-up between FC Amsterdam and Hibernians F.C. were played over five days in the Netherlands, with the second leg being held on a Sunday
