In only their second season of European football, Bayer Leverkusen earned their first major title in professional competition. This was also the second UEFA Cup final decided on penalty kicks, four years after the first one. This was the third season in which all English clubs were banned from European football competitions
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participated in the 1987–88 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 ban on English clubs, their three births were allocated to associations 9–11, each gaining a third birth.
Association ranking
For the 1987–88 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1986 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1981–82 to 1985–86.
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 the first year of the ban had been tabulated, England fell down to sixth in the UEFA rankings, which reduced the number of re-allocated UEFA Cup births for 1987–88 to three. These were transferred as a third birth for associations 9–11, namely Portugal, Austria and Romania. Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and League Cup winners Arsenal would have qualified by league position. Had England retained a fourth European place, Norwich City would have also qualified.
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 finished the 1986-87 Yugoslav First League in second place behind Vardar, because of a six-point deduction. This was imposed to 12 different teams, Vardar not among them, at the end of the previous season due to allegations of match fixing that resulted in the final matchday being voided and replayed. After an appeal, the Yugoslav Constituional Court reversed both rulings on 29 July 1987, proclaiming Partizan as champions of the 1986-87 season and demoting Vardar to fifth place, which would have left them out of European competition in benefit of the fourth placed team Rijeka. However, the draw for the European Cup had already been conducted, and Vardar remained in the tournament, with Partizan competing in the UEFA Cup instead.
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches exceptionally took place on Tuesdays, Thursdays or Saturdays.
