European opening has fresh appeal after reconstruction

Intertoto Cup: Stewart Fisher finds several Scottish clubs contemplating the possibility of entering the maligned competition next season

UEFA’S administrators may just have achieved the impossible and restored some credibility to the Intertoto Cup. As the Sunday Herald exclusively revealed six months ago, next season will see Europe’s most derided club competition undergo some drastic changes to its format, alterations which were given the blessing of the governing body’s executive committee at a meeting in Rome two weeks ago.

As of next season, clubs will participate in a maximum of three rounds instead of the current five, 11 teams will graduate to the second qualifying round of the Uefa Cup instead of the three that progress at the moment, and the plan is for one team from each of the governing body’s 49 member associations to take part the competition, even if administrators had to admit defeat in their early plans to make entry mandatory.

The only possible problem for any potential Scottish entrant to next season’s competition is that they would still be forced to begin their campaign on July 1, the best part of a month before the SPL season commences and a full week before the World Cup in Germany will reach its conclusion. At least it is unlikely that members of the Scotland national squad are likely to be in attendance at the German jamboree.

Teams have until February to formally declare their intention to participate and the scheme is still so new that most top-flight clubs have yet to actually be formally notified about the change, but some investigation carried out by the Sunday Herald suggests that the alterations are substantial enough to have most top-flight Scottish clubs reacting in a more positive manner than usual to the competition.

Hibs manager Tony Mowbray, despite an overwhelmingly disastrous debut in the competition against Lithuanian side FK Vetra back at the beginning of his tenure in July 2003, is as upbeat as anyone as he tries to build the European experience of his young squad, even though he would still hope to gain entry for the Champions League or the Uefa Cup first. “We would hope to qualify from league position or through the cup competitions but if not, it [the Intertoto Cup] is something we as a football club wouldn’t turn down, at this stage of our players’ development,” a club source said.

The Easter Road club – whose European involvement for this campaign was ended on Thursday with a 5-1 aggregate Uefa Cup defeat to Ukrainian side Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk – became only the third Scottish Intertoto entrant last season, after John Lambie’s Partick Thistle side, and the Ivano Bonetti-era Dundee. Suffice to say that none so far has been a resounding success.

Aberdeen and Kilmarnock are other sides populating the top-six before this weekend who refused to rule out applying for entry when the Sunday Herald sounded them out this week. “We would wait until nearer the time and then decide whether it interferes with Jimmy’s [Calderwood] pre-season plans,” said a spokesman for Pittodrie club.

“It is something I would have to discuss further with people about the club, but obviously it is a bit more attractive now,” was Kilmarnock manager Jim Jefferies’ take on things. “These things can often affect your pre-season, but if it was part of the pre-season build up, I couldn’t rule it out totally. We will have to discuss it as a club at our next board meeting. Sometimes, depending on who you are drawn against, the extra travel can end up costing the club money.”

In the event of more than one Scottish team applying for the solitary place, the team with the highest final league placing would go forward, most likely the side which finishes fourth or fifth in the table. Uefa’s final access list for next season’s club competitions is not published until December, but with only the top three clubs in the SPL, and winners of the Scottish Cup sure to qualify for European football, on recent league form even Rangers would possibly not be in a position to scorn a second chance at some European football. In 1996, a Bordeaux team that included Zinedine Zidane, Christophe Dugarry and Bixente Lizarazu – all World Cup winners just to years later – made it all the way from the obscurity of the InterToto Cup to the Uefa Cup final before being beaten 5-1 on aggregate by Bayern Munich.

Interest from one of the bigger SPL clubs could take participation out of the others’ reach, but even lower down the footballing food chain there are rumblings of approval. John Hughes reacted with typical enthusiasm when contemplating the genuine possibility of his Falkirk side appearing in Europe next season. “We will leave it until later on in the season and see where we are but that would certainly be something we are interested in,” Hughes said. “Why not?”

Bringing European football to Inverness for the first time would be a laudable goal and a significant milestone, but player/manager Craig Brewster was slightly more guarded than some of his peers. “The season is long enough as it is, without making it any longer,” he told the Sunday Herald. “I’m not really in a position to say one way or the other at the moment.”

Representatives from Rangers, Celtic and Hearts on the European Club Forum all had a hand in giving the competition the blessing, although Uefa’s progress on this front was tempered by a separate setback for the governing body’s plans. A report for the European Parliament concluded that a new rule obliging clubs to include ‘homegrown’ players in their squads would most likely fall foul of EU laws on discrimination.

Taken from the Sunday Herald