UEFA Cup map - 2008-09 season

The 2008-09 edition of the UEFA Cup will technically be the last, with its reorganization next season and renaming as the Europa League. It seems to me a patently absurd change because whatever you call the tournament it will continue to be second-tier and consist of champions of smaller countries and also-rans of the bigger ones. I just don't think there's anything that can fundamentally change that and certainly not a "rebranding" to give its proper corporate-speak description. It is what it is. If you're looking for something to spice it up, make it a blind draw and straight knockout from the very beginning. Bring back a bit of the romance.

But I digress. We're talking about the 2008-09 UEFA Cup and the map that our man Bill Turianski has created for it. It's got what you've come to expect - a table listing each club's domestic league attendance and a map displaying the logo of each club that's made the Group Stage, sized proportional to their attendance. As with the Champions League Western Europe heavily dominate, only 9 of the 40 clubs come from the East and even that includes Olympiakos and Galatasaray. Germany and Holland with 5, England and Spain with 4, France and Italy with 3 and that's 60% of the entrants from just six countries.

A few big names in the UEFA Cup this time around a number of former Champions League and UEFA Cup winners in the mix. Milan (7 times European Cup/Champions League winners - though strangely never the UEFA Cup), Ajax (6 total European titles), Sevilla (winners in 2006 and 2007), Feyenoord, Benfica, Valencia...many more illustrious names. And only a handful of minnows really - only a handful of clubs (Racing Santander, NEC Nijmegen, Portsmouth maybe) have limited experience in Europe.

Should be a really solid tournament to be honest.

Bill Turianski runs the website Bill's Sports Maps - which features many, many maps, profiles of teams and a whole lot more.