This is the second and last European tournament won by a Swedish team, five years after Göteborg's first UEFA Cup conquest in 1982, as well as the last European final played by a Swedish team, while Dundee United became the last team from Scotland to reach a European final until 2003. This was the second season in which all English clubs were banned from European football competitions.[1][2]
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participated in the 1986–87 UEFA Cup, all entering from the first round over six knock-out rounds. The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
Associations 1–3 each have four teams qualify.
Associations 4–8 each have three teams qualify.
Associations 9–21 each have two teams qualify.
Associations 22–32 each have one team qualify.
Due to the ongoing English ban, their four births were allocated to associations 9–12, each gaining a third birth.
Association ranking
For the 1986–87 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1985 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1980–81 to 1984–85.
England: Since the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, all English football clubs were placed under an indefinite ban by Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) from all European competitions, which would be lifted in 1990–91. As England was first in the UEFA rankings, each of their four allocated UEFA Cup births for 1986–87 were transferred as a third birth for associations 9–12, namely Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, France and East Germany. West Ham United, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday would have qualified by league position, while Oxford United would have qualified by winning the 1985-86 League Cup.
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. Its virtual ranking is only an original research, because the UEFA country ranking was only used to allocate the UEFA Cup spots at time, so Wales was not included.
Teams
The labels in 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
Yugoslavia:Partizan was crowned champion of the 1985-86 Yugoslav First League on a tie-breaker with Red Star Belgrade, but the Football Association of Yugoslavia voided all results of the last matchday of the season and ordered a full replay, due to allegations of match fixing over multiple games. Partizan elected to not replay their final game, and Red Star Belgrade was crowned champion instead, with Partizan qualifying for the UEFA Cup in 2nd place. After an appeal by Partizan, the Yugoslav Constituional Court reversed the decision on 29 July 1987, reinstating Partizan as champions.
Austria:Wacker Innsbruck qualified for the UEFA Cup, but its license in the Austrian Football Bundesliga was taken by FC Swarovski Tirol, as Wacker Innsbruck fell to the eighth division of Austrian football. While considered a new team, Swarovski Tirol retained the UEFA Cup placing.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches exceptionally took place on Tuesdays or Thursdays. The semi-finals reverted to being played in the same days, and the two-legged final again had a two week interval.
