For the second consecutive year, two Italian teams reached the final of the UEFA Cup, This was the first European title for Internazionale in 26 years, after their two consecutive European Cup triumphs in 1964 and 1965. This tournament also marked the return of English clubs, after a five-year ban resulting from the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 32 UEFA member associations participated in the 1990–91 UEFA Cup, all entering from the first round over six knock-out rounds. 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.
Association ranking
For the 1990–91 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1989 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1984–85 to 1988–89. Having returned to European competitions after serving its five-year ban, England's score was limited to the first of the five seasons accounted for in the ranking, and only one English club competed in the UEFA Cup, from a previous total of four.
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
Yugoslavia:Hajduk Split finished third in the 1989–90 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 second instance. Partizan, the next-best team not yet qualified for European competition, took its spot in the UEFA Cup.
East Germany (GDR): All matches of teams representing the DFV of East Germany, which qualified through the 1989–90 DDR-Oberliga, on or after German reunification of 3 October show the flag of the reunited nation of Germany. However, those matches and their records were still counted for East Germany, and not for Germany, under UEFA regulations.
Greece:AEK Athens finished second in the 1989–90 Alpha Ethniki, but it was punished with a one-year ban from all European competitions by UEFA, after AEK fans attacked Marseille's team bus on its way to the 1989–90 European Cup second round return leg]] in Athens. Iraklis, the next best team not already qualified for European competition, took its place in the UEFA Cup.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches exceptionally took place on Tuesdays or Thursdays.