The competition was notable for the dominance of West German teams, who were only knocked out of the tournament among themselves, setting up for an all-German final, the first out of the two ever played in UEFA history. All four semi-finalists came from West Germany, with this being the only instance in a UEFA club competition, and one of them defeated the fifth team in the quarter-finals.
This was the last edition of the UEFA Cup where the 64 spots were allocated to the respective associations by the invitation method inherited from the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. Beginning in 1980, the newly introduced UEFA country rankings would determine the number of teams for each country, based on results from the five-year period preceding the last completed season.
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participate in the 1979–80 UEFA Cup. The original allocation scheme was as follows:
3 associations have four teams qualify.
3 associations have three teams qualify.
18 associations have two teams qualify.
7 associations have one team qualify.
Czechoslovakia was the only association selected to have an extra third birth for this season, while Bulgaria and East Germany went back to two qualified teams. The remaining spot went to West Germany for title holders Borussia Mönchengladbach. With this being the last season before the introduction of the UEFA rankings, only four of the 20 two-team associations had never been chosen for the extra third birth over eight seasons of rotation: Greece, Turkey, Denmark and Norway.
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.
Albania: Although Albanian teams returned to European competition in 1978 after five years of absence, the country choose to not participate in the UEFA Cup until 1981. Vllaznia would have qualified for the UEFA Cup by league position.
Teams
The labels in the 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 in the first two rounds exceptionally took place on Tuesdays or Thursdays. Also, the second leg of the semi-finals was played on a Tuesday.
