Sports

Intertoto Cup Opens European Season

With Euro ’08 barely a week old, the European club season officially opens this weekend with the Intertoto Cup.

The competition, a qualifying tournament for the UEFA Cup, starts on Saturday with several players that were on Euro ’08 duty back in action. A total of 14 first leg ties will be played on Saturday and Sunday, with 28 sides aiming to join the likes of Deportivo La Coruna, Napoli, VfB Stuttgart and Aston Villa in the third and final round fixtures.

The eleven winners of those ties will move on to the second qualifying round of the UEFA Cup, and some top sides are involved even at this early stage.

Grasshoppers, featuring Swiss national team members Eldin Jakupovic and Ricardo Cabanas, play Albania’s KS Besa on Saturday, although the game will be played in Wohlen rather than the Zurich-based club’s current Letzigrund Stadium, a venue for three Euro Group C games.

On the same day, Russia’s Saturn Moskovskaya Oblast take on FC Etzella Ettlebrück, who are the only club from Luxembourg ever to progress through a round in this competiiton, while Turkey’s Sivasspor face a trip to Montenegro to take on FK Grbalj.

Like Switzerland, Sweden did not progress beyond the group stage at Euro ’08, but, should they play for IF Elfsborg against Hibernian in Edinburgh on Sunday, goalkeeper Johan Wiland and Anders Svensson will have had barely 18 days to recover from their disappointment with Lars Lagerback’s side.

Elsewhere, Champions League regulars Rosenborg make an unusually early entry into European competition at FK Ekranas in Lithuania, while two teams that competed in recent UEFA Cup group stages will look to progress again. Involved in that compeition last season, Panionios NFC are at OFK Beograd while Denmark’s Odense visit Finland’s TPS Turku.