This was the first final between two Italian sides in the UEFA competitions history and the third between two clubs of the same country. This was the fifth and final season in which all English clubs were banned from European football competitions
Association team allocation
A total of 65 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participated in the 1988–89 UEFA Cup. 63 teams entered from the first round, competing over six knock-out rounds, while two other teams competed in a preliminary round.
The association ranking based on the UEFA country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:
Associations 1–3 each have four teams qualify.
Associations 4–8 each have three teams qualify.
Associations 9–21 each have two teams qualify.
Associations 22–32 each have one team qualify.
Due to the ongoing English ban, their first birth was allocated to association 9, gaining a third birth. As two associations were tied for 10th place in the UEFA rankings, both of them qualified a third team for a preliminary round, whose winner would take the remaining English birth in the first round.
Association ranking
For the 1989–90 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1988 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1983–84 to 1987–88.
England: Since the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, all English football clubs were placed under an indefinite ban by Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) from all European competitions, which would be lifted in 1990–91. As England was twelfth in the UEFA rankings after three years of ban had been tabulated, their two births were to be transferred as a third birth for associations 9 and 10. While the first one went to Austria, both France and Yugoslavia were tied as the association 10. Therefore, both countries were awarded a third birth for a special preliminary round to obtain the remaining spot in the first round. In England, League Cup winners Nottingham Forest and Norwich City would have qualified by league position. Had England retained the four European places it held before the ban, Derby County and Tottenham Hotspur would have also qualified.
Wales: There was no national league in Wales before 1992 and the only competition organised by the Football Association of Wales was the Welsh Cup so Wales had just a single participant in European competitions, the winner (or best placed Welsh team as several English teams also competed) of the Welsh Cup which competed in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. Its virtual ranking is only an original research, because the UEFA country ranking was only used to allocate the UEFA Cup spots at time, so Wales was not included.
Teams
The labels in parentheses show how each team qualified for competition:
TH: Title holders
CW: Cup winners
CR: Cup runners-up
LC: League Cup winners
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.: League position
P-W: End-of-season European competition play-offs winners
Albania:Partizani finished second in the 1988–89 Albanian National Championship, but couldn't compete in the UEFA Cup, as it was serving a 4-year ban from European competitions, which was eventually reduced to two years. The ban was imposed in late 1987, due to the violent play against Benfica in the first round of the 1987–88 European Cup, and its subsequent disqualification. Apolonia, the next-best team not yet qualified for European competition, took its spot in the UEFA Cup.
Yugoslavia:Hajduk Split finished third in the 1988–89 Yugoslav First League, but it was banned in November 1987 from entering any UEFA competition for two seasons, due to crowd trouble during the club's 1987–88 European Cup Winners' Cupsecond round return leg against Marseille, which came after repeated prior incidents at Hajduk's European home matches throughout early-to-mid 1980s. The ban was only enacted on seasons where Hadjuk Split would've qualified for European competition, with this being the first instance. Dinamo Zagreb, the next-best team not yet qualified for European competition, took its spot in the UEFA Cup.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with each legs of both semifinals now being held over consecutive days. Matches for the first and second round were held on Tuesdays, while other rounds were held on Wednesdays, except for the Antwerp vs Stuttgart match-up in the third round.
The match was abandoned in the 104th minute with the score at 1–1 after Austria Wien's goalkeeper Franz Wohlfahrt was struck by an iron rod thrown from the home stand. As a result, Ajax had to concede the match by default and were excluded from competing in European football for a year. Austria Wien won 4–0 on aggregate.