Pompey Await UEFA Cup Fate

Last updated : 28 August 2008 By Jim Bonner
Pompey fans will be eagerly anticipating the UEFA Cup draw tomorrow to discover who will be Pompey's first ever European opposition as well as which country we will be visiting.

I am 99.9% certain that Portsmouth are seeded despite never playing in Europe before. This is because of how well English teams have performed in recent times and so our "Englishness" ranks us higher than at least 40 other clubs in this year's competition.

That means we will avoid the likes of AC Milan, Sevilla, Valencia and Benfica and instead face the likely prospect of going to a country such as Romania, Switzerland or Cyprus.

I've compiled a list of who we could draw and where they are from for those looking to go abroad.

When the draw is made tomorrow at noon Pompey will be put into a group with 4 other seeded clubs and 5 unseeded clubs. To my knowledge we can only draw the unseeded teams and no other English club will be allowed in our group. (UEFA have made this very confusing!)

UEFA Cup Opposition List

Motherwell (Motherwell, Scotland)
St. Patrick's Athletic (Inchicore, Ireland)
Saint-Etienne (Saint-Etienne, France)
FC Nordsjaelland (Farum, Denmark)
Borussia Dortmund (Dortmund, Germany)
VfL Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany)
Maritimo (Funchal, Madeira Islands, Portugal)
Vitoria Setubal (Setubal, Portugal)
Vitoria Guimaraes (Guimaraes, Portugal)
Napoli (Naples, Italy)
Unirea Urziceni (Urziceni, Romania)
FC Timisoara (Timisoara, Romania)
FC Vasuli (Vasuli, Romania)
NEC Nijmegen (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
FC Twente (Enschede, Netherlands)
Brondby (Brondby, Denmark)
SK Brann (Bergen, Norway)
FC Honka (Espoo, Finland)
Kalmar FF (Kalmar, Sweden)
Standard Liege (Liege, Belgium)
Banik Ostrava (Ostrava, Czech Republic)
Kayserispor (Kayseri, Turkey)
Red Bull Salzburg (Wals-Siezenheim, Austria)
BSC Young Boys (Berne, Switzerland)
FC Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland)
AC Bellinzona (Bellinzona, Switzerland)
Wisla Krakow (Krakow, Poland)
Lech Poznan (Poznan, Poland)
Dinamo Zagreb (Zagreb, Croatia)
Slaven Belupo (Koprivnica, Croatia)
Metalist Kharkiv (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
Litex Lovech (Lovech, Bulgaria)
Cherno More (Varna, Bulgaria)
FBK Kaunas (Kaunas, Lithuania)
Artmedia Petrzalka (Bratislava, Slovakia)
MSK Zilina (Zilina, Slovakia)
Borac Cacak (Cacak, Serbia)
FC Moscow (Moscow, Russia)
AC Omonia (Nicosia, Cyprus)
APOEL (Nicosia, Cyprus)

Kudos to Bert Kassie who has done his best to explain the whole draw procedure. Go and check out his site if you are still confused as to how the whole thing works!