Topic summary
UEFA cup
Extracted from the Wikipedia article UEFA Europa League.
History
The UEFA Cup was preceded by the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which was a European football competition played between 1955 and 1971. The competition grew from 11 teams during the first edition (1955–58) to 64 teams by the last edition which was played in 1970–71. It was replaced by the UEFA Cup, a new seasonal confederation competition with different regulations, format and disciplinary committee. In 2009, UEFA observed that while the Fairs Cup was "very successful ... the time came when the UEFA Executive Committee thought that such a major competition should be governed and organised by UEFA itself, which could ensure that standard rules were followed and could deal with refereeing and disciplinary matters". Since that time, the UEFA Cup "steadily became more prestigious".