The 1999–2000 UEFA Cup season was the 29th edition of the UEFA Cup competition. The final took place at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen and was won by Galatasaray, who defeated Arsenal in the final. The game was scoreless through the first ninety minutes and stayed that way through thirty minutes of extra time. The match went on to penalty kicks in which Gheorghe Popescu scored the winning goal to win the cup. Galatasaray won the cup without losing a single game. The competition was marred by violence involving Turkish and English hooligans in the semi-finals and the final, in particular the fatal stabbings of Leeds United fans Kevin Speight and Christopher Loftus by Galatasaray fans in Istanbul.
Parma were the defending champions, but were eliminated by Werder Bremen in the fourth round. They entered in the first round due to elimination in the third qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League.
It was the first season of the new format UEFA Cup; it had absorbed the now defunct Cup Winners' Cup to include domestic cup winners, and now featured an additional knockout round. This was the first year when the UEFA Cup winners qualified for the UEFA Super Cup. This season's champions also qualified for the 2001 FIFA Club World Championship, which was never held. So far, Galatasaray are the only UEFA Cup winners to qualify for a Club World Cup.
Contents
Association team allocation
A total of 142 teams from 49 UEFA associations participated in the 1999–2000 UEFA Cup. Associations are allocated places according to their 1999–2000 UEFA league coefficient.
Below is the qualification scheme for the 1999–00 UEFA Cup:
Associations 1–6 each enter three teams
Associations 7–8 each enter four teams
Associations 9–15 each enter two teams
Associations 16–21 each enter three teams
Associations 22–50 each enter two teams, with the exception of Bosnia who didn't have a domestic league winner, as well as Liechtenstein and Andorra who enter with only one team each
3 winners of the Intertoto Cup
16 teams eliminated from the 1999–2000 UEFA Champions League third qualifying round are transferred to the UEFA Cup
8 teams eliminated from the 1999–2000 UEFA Champions League first group stage are transferred to the UEFA Cup
Association ranking
Notes
(UCL): Additional teams transferred from the UEFA Champions League
(IT): Additional teams from Intertoto Cup
Redistribution rules
A UEFA Cup place is vacated when a team qualify for both the Champions League and the UEFA Cup, or qualify for the UEFA Cup by more than one method. When a place is vacated, it is redistributed within the national association by the following rules:
When the domestic cup winners (considered as the "highest-placed" qualifier within the national association) also qualify for the Champions League, their UEFA Cup place is vacated, and the remaining UEFA Cup qualifiers are moved up one place, with the final place (with the earliest starting round) taken by the domestic cup runners-up, provided they do not already qualify for the Champions League or the UEFA Cup. Otherwise, UEFA forgot to establish a rule, so each association decided how to assign this place.
When the domestic cup winners also qualify for the UEFA Cup through league position, their place through the league position is vacated, and the UEFA Cup qualifiers which finish lower in the league are moved up one place, with the final place taken by the highest-placed league finisher which do not qualify for the UEFA Cup yet.
A place vacated by the League Cup winners is taken by the highest-placed league finisher which do not qualify for the UEFA Cup yet.
A Fair Play place is taken by the highest-ranked team in the domestic Fair Play table which do not qualify for the Champions League or UEFA Cup yet.
Teams
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
TH: Title holders
CW: Cup winners
CR: Cup runners-up
LC: League Cup winners
Nth: League position
PO: End-of-season European competition play-off winners
FP: Fair play
IT: Intertoto Cup winners
CL: Relegated from the Champions League
GS: Third-placed teams from the group stage
Q3: Losers from the third qualifying round
Notes
Round and draw dates
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Thursdays apart from the final, which took place on a Wednesday, though exceptionally could take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays due to scheduling conflicts.
Final phase
In the final phase, teams played against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final. The mechanism of the draws for each round was as follows:
In the draws for the third and fourth rounds, teams were seeded and divided into groups containing an equal number of seeded and unseeded teams. In each group, the seeded teams were drawn against the unseeded teams, with the first team drawn hosting the first leg. Teams from the same association could not be drawn against each other.
In the draws for the quarter-finals onwards, there were no seedings and teams from the same association could be drawn against each other.
Final
The final was played on 17 May 2000 at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark.