Historical seeding for UEFA European club competition draws

[Papen83]

Dear forum colleagues,
I am interested to know whether someone has information about how UEFA organized the draws for the European club competitions before the end of the cold war in 1989. Was there any seeding system or another kind of factors that were taken into account, or the draws were completely open?

Let's take the European Cup tournament as an easier example - as it had only 1 representative per country in these years. I guess there may have been, at least for some part of the pre-1989 period, some criteria that would limit the options a team could be drawn against. For example - geographical distance, or even political one (West vs East bloc representative split, etc.)

Please let me know if you are aware of any links leading to websites with description of the historical UEFA club competitions drawing procedure for the pre-1989 period.

[Sagy]

I’m not aware of any links. IIRC, in the 70s the Champions Cup and the Cup Winners Cup were open draw, no country protection was needed (1 team per country unless the previous year title holder didn’t win domestic championship). I don’t remember if UEFA cup had country protection in the early rounds, the later rounds (round of 16 and later) didn’t have country protection.

[Matt7r]

Correct - Nottingham Forest and Liverpool met in the first round in 1978/79, so clearly no seeding/country protection back then

[Tazmania]

There was seeding in 1987-88 because I remember reading an article criticising it after Real Madrid drew Napoli in the Champions Cup R1.

[Sagy]

There was seeding in 1987-88 because I remember reading an article criticising it after Real Madrid drew Napoli in the Champions Cup R1.

Are you sure that they had seeding in 1987-88?

R1 with Real vs Napoli on one hand and Shamrock (Ireland) vs Omonia (Cyprus) on the other would lead me to believe that there was no seeding. To be fair, I can’t remember when seeding was first introduced.

[Tazmania]

I only remember reading an article in World Soccer magazine criticising the seeding system for allowing those two clubs to be drawn together so I am sure there was some type of seeding system then.

[Park]

There wasn't seeding before the champions league. The game between Real vs Napoli was seen as a reason to change the European Competition, to prevent big clubs from being eliminated after two games.

[Juliusz]

There was a weird system with only few teams seeded.

In first round draw, these were semi-finalists of UEFA CCs from last 5 seasons.

So, in 1987, following teams were seeded: Anderlecht, Bayern, Benfica, Dynamo Kyiv, Porto, Girondins Bordeaux, Rapid Wien, Real Madrid, Steaua.

For reference:

http://www.mogiel.net/EC/seeding.php
http://www.mogiel.net/EC/remarks.php

[Tazmania]

Many thanks.

I can remember that the article I read described the seeding system as "rough and ready"!

[Papen83]

According to the English language version of Wikipedia, at least until season 1961-62 teams were split geographically in the round they started from. But analyzing the later draws, one can see that similar geographical (and practically political) splits were the norm at least until the 1970s.

[Sagy]

There was a weird system with only few teams seeded.

In first round draw, these were semi-finalists of UEFA CCs from last 5 seasons.

So, in 1987, following teams were seeded: Anderlecht, Bayern, Benfica, Dynamo Kyiv, Porto, Girondins Bordeaux, Rapid Wien, Real Madrid, Steaua.

For reference:

http://www.mogiel.net/EC/seeding.php
http://www.mogiel.net/EC/remarks.php

Thanks for the reference.

It looks like seeding started in the 1979/80 season but was only for the first round and only included teams that reached the semifinals in the previous 5 years. So there was no fixed number of seeded teams nor was the number of seeded teams equal to the number of unseeded teams. This system lasted until the 1989/90 season.

[sowtong]

Seeding actually started in the 1967/1968 season, with reference to www.europeancuphistory.com, a seeding system would ensure that the teams from countries that had already supplied finalists would be kept apart until the later stages of the competition http://www.europeancuphistory.com/euro68.html
This continued each season with different seeding criteria until the 1979/80 season, when the criteria was set that only included teams that reached the semifinals in the previous 5 years, along with determining how many teams from each league participated in the UEFA Cup and how National sides were seeded for the Euro's every four years.

[Papen83]

Seeding actually started in the 1967/1968 season, with reference to www.europeancuphistory.com, a seeding system would ensure that the teams from countries that had already supplied finalists would be kept apart until the later stages of the competition http://www.europeancuphistory.com/euro68.html
This continued each season with different seeding criteria until the 1979/80 season, when the criteria was set that only included teams that reached the semifinals in the previous 5 years, along with determining how many teams from each league participated in the UEFA Cup and how National sides were seeded for the Euro's every four years.

That's very interesting. Though it was probably not really about finalists but winners. Or if it was finalists then it was only for finalists of the last several editions. As I checked the post-1967/68 period and here are the opponents of the French champions (and there were French finalists in the European Cup in the 1950s) in the first possible round:

67-68 Kups (FIN)
68-69 Celtic (SCO)
69-70 Bayern Munich (GER)
70-71 Cagliari (ITA)
71-72 Gornik Zabrze (POL)
72-73 Juventus (ITA)
73-74 Vejle (DEN)
74-75 Sporting (POR)

In half of these occasions they first met teams from countries that had winners in the tournament.

[Park]

Thanks interesting. I thought there was no seeding, because in 1988-1989 PSV and Porto, the last two winners played against each other. But it wasn't the first round I see now. PSV could skip the first round as winner of the last edition, so the first match they played was against Porto in second round.

[Sagy]

Seeding actually started in the 1967/1968 season, with reference to www.europeancuphistory.com, a seeding system would ensure that the teams from countries that had already supplied finalists would be kept apart until the later stages of the competition http://www.europeancuphistory.com/euro68.html
This continued each season with different seeding criteria until the 1979/80 season, when the criteria was set that only included teams that reached the semifinals in the previous 5 years, along with determining how many teams from each league participated in the UEFA Cup and how National sides were seeded for the Euro's every four years.

As @Papen83 pointed out, it couldn’t have been finalists. I also have some doubts about seeding teams from countries that supplied winners. For example, in the 1971-72 season, the Spanish champion (Valencia) had to play the Luxembourg champ in the only match of the Preliminary round.