This was the only European title for Ipswich Town, who never made it past a quarterfinal round before, and would never go beyond the third round in future competitions. As of 2024, this has been the only appearance in a major European final for both teams, which was also the case with the finalists of the European Cup Winners' Cup that season. Both are the only current instances in a major UEFA tournament; it has also happened with the finalists of the 1968–69 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which is considered an unofficial tournament by UEFA.
According to a UEFA decision in 1979, the UEFA ranking was introduced to serve as the method to determine the number of competing teams per country, and the Fairs Cup entry criteria was finally abolished.[1]
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participate in the 1980–81 UEFA Cup. For the first time, an association ranking based on the newly introduced UEFA country coefficients was 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.
Association ranking
For the 1980–81 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1979 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1974–75 to 1978–79.
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.
Albania: Until 1985, Albania frequently withdrew their allocated place in the UEFA Cup due to political reasons. 17 Nëntori would have qualified by league position. This additional place went to the country of the title holders, as Eintracht Frankfurt had not qualified by league position, giving West Germany a fifth entry in the UEFA Cup.
Teams
The labels in the 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
Italy:Milan had originally qualified for the UEFA Cup by finishing second in the 1979–80 Serie A, but the team was punished with an administrative relegation on May 19 due to its central role in the Totonero match fixing scandal. The vacant UEFA Cup spot was taken by Torino, which was promoted to third in the standings as a result of Milan's relegation.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches in the first two rounds exceptionally took place on Tuesdays.
