The 2007âÂÂ08 UEFA Cup was the 37th edition of the UEFA Cup, UEFA's former second-tier club football tournament. The final was played at the City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester, England on 14 May 2008 between Rangers of Scotland and Zenit Saint Petersburg of Russia. Zenit won the match 2âÂÂ0, with goals from Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyryanov, to claim their first UEFA Cup title. The first qualifying games were played on 19 July 2007 and the main tournament commenced on 20 September 2007. A total of 157 football clubs took part in the tournament (including its qualifying rounds).
Each European football nation is represented by a different number of its associate clubs, depending on the UEFA coefficients. BuduÃÂnost Podgorica and Rudar Pljevlja were the first teams from Montenegro to enter the competition.
The semi-final between Zenit and Bayern Munich was alleged to have been fixed. Both clubs denied the allegations, and the UEFA probe found no wrongdoing on either part.
Sevilla could not defend their title as they automatically qualified for the 2007âÂÂ08 UEFA Champions League and also reached the knockout stage.
The tournament's top scorers were Pavel Pogrebnyak of Zenit Saint Petersburg and Luca Toni of Bayern Munich, each with 10 goals.
A total of 157 teams from all 53 UEFA member associations participated in the 2007âÂÂ08 UEFA Cup. The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
Moreover, the following teams also qualified for the competition:
For the 2007âÂÂ08 UEFA Cup, the associations were allocated places according to their 2006 UEFA country coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2001âÂÂ02 to 2005âÂÂ06.
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the UEFA Cup, as noted below:
The following was the access list for this season.
Due to the UEFA Cup title holder (Sevilla) qualifying for the Champions League via their domestic league, the following changes to the access list were made:
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
The draw, which was conducted by UEFA's director of professional football Giorgio Marchetti and Michele Centenaro, UEFA's head of club competitions, was held on Tuesday, 9 October 2007 at 12:00 CET in Nyon, Switzerland.
The top three teams (highlighted in green) of each group qualified for the next round. Based on paragraph 6.06 in the UEFA regulations for the current season, if two or more teams were equal on points on completion of all the group matches, the following criteria were applied to determine the rankings:
All of the rounds in the final phase are two-legged, except for the final. In the event of aggregate scores being equal after normal time in the second leg, the winning team will be that which scored more goals on their away leg: if the scores in the two matches were identical, extra time is played. The away goals rule also applies if scores are equal at the end of extra time. If there are no goals scored in extra time, the tie is decided on a penalty shoot out. The team first out of the hat in each tie plays the first leg of their tie at home, and the second leg away.
The top scorers in the 2007âÂÂ08 UEFA Cup are the following: