A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participated in the 1982–83 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 1983–84 UEFA Cup, the associations are allocated places according to their 1982 UEFA country coefficients, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1977–78 to 1981–82.
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.
Albania: Until 1985, Albania frequently withdrew their allocated place in the UEFA Cup due to political reasons. Partizani would have qualified by league position. This additional place went to the 10th placed association, Czechoslovakia, instead of the 9th placed association, the Soviet Union.
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
The schedule of the competition was as follows. Matches were scheduled for Wednesdays, though some matches exceptionally took place on Tuesdays or Sundays.
In 1997, it was revealed that the Anderlecht chairman Constant Vanden Stock had paid a £27,000 bribe to the referee Emilio Guruceta Muro in exchange for help fixing their semi-final second leg match versus Nottingham Forest.[1] During the match, Anderlecht were awarded a dubious penalty, and a last minute Nottingham Forest goal – that would have won them the tie on the away goals rule – was disallowed.[2] In 2016, it emerged that UEFA had known about the bribe since 1993 but had taken no action until the information was made public in 1997,[3] when UEFA suspended Anderlecht from the next European tournament for which they qualified.[1] On qualifying for the 1998–99 UEFA Cup, Anderlecht appealed the suspension in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned the ban on the grounds that it was made by UEFA's executive committee, which did not have the authority to issue the ban.[4]
The match featured an infamous incident that saw a Hajduk fan (later identified as Ante Baraba, a resident of Paljuv settlement within the Novigrad village) run onto the pitch before the start of the second half with a live rooster – in reference to Tottenham's club symbol, the cockerel – and, while standing at the centre circle, kill the animal by snapping its neck.[5][6] The contest took place as scheduled, however, as a result of the incident, Hajduk were fined CHF3,000 and ordered to play their next European tie at least 300 km away from their home stadium. That tie turned out to be their 1984–85 European Cup Winners' Cupfirst round match against Dynamo Moscow.
