Hamburg win UEFA Intertoto Cup
By: Jan | February 23rd, 2008
Good news for Huub Stevens and Rafael van der Vaart, who won’t have to end their Hamburg days without any silverware. Hamburg secured their passage to this year’s UEFA Cup through a cup competition, which had originally been conceived to give poor betting addicted folks a way to burn more money in the football free summer months. The cup was eventually adopted by the UEFA and upgraded in value by offering a chance to win a place in the UEFA Cup. Since then the Intertoto Cup underwent a couple of format changes, with the current one consisting of three knockout stages (of which teams from top ranked leagues only have to play the last one) and with the team advancing the furthest in the UEFA Cup winning the Intertoto trophy. Atletico Madrid and Hamburg were the sole survivors as of the round of 32. But Bolton surprisingly eliminated Madrid, while Hamburg achieved a 3-1 aggregate win over FC Zürich, so the trophy is all Hamburg’s and will be presented to them prior to the first leg of their clash with fellow Bundesliga side Leverkusen.
In terms of meaninglessness and ugliness it rivals the Bundesliga’s Ligapokal, with the latter at least being worth some Euros. But meaningless doesn’t mean you can’t pretend it isn’t. Hamburg should follow the example set by Olympique Marseille in this photo. The only way to make this ceremony even more sad will be to point out, that this is the first thing Hamburg wins after 25 years.
In case you missed it: the UEFA Cup Offside covered all the matches of this round, as is: including all the ones with Bundesliga sides in it.
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Jan, you scooped me. I was composing a post on this very subject along with a Dfb-Pokal match preview with Wolfsburg. But as you gracefully mentioned, this is the first silverware that HSV have won in over 20 years. SIGH.
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