UEFA Cup 2007-2008

Seeding arrangements for 2nd Qualifying Round. Draw takes place on Friday 3rd August 2007

The 2^nd Qualifying Round draw takes place on Friday 3^rd August 2007 .The matches will be played over two legs on Thursday 16^th August and Thursday 30^th August.

The draw will include 64 teams as follows:
-37 winners from the 1^st Qualifying Round
-11 Intertoto Cup qualifiers
-16 teams who have a bye into the 2^nd Qualifying Round.
Dunfermline Athletic is in this group.

The 1^st and 2^nd Qualifying Rounds of the UEFA Cup are staged on a regional basis and Dunfermline are in the Northern Region.In the 2^nd Qualifying Round there will be ten matches.These matches are also seeded based on the individual team's co-efficient. Dunfermline's current co-efficient is 10.064, which means that the Pars will definitely be seeded in this round of the competition.

It also means that we now know some of the other teams in the round that we will not meet - these include Standard Liege (Belgium) and Fredrikstad FK (Norway), since they too have qualified for direct entry to this round and will also be seeded.

After that, the draw is more complex because it depends on Intertoto Cup and 1^st Qualifying Round winners. The seeded teams will change depending on who qualifies.For example, three Intertoto Cup qualifiers will enter the Northern Region draw for the 2^nd Qualifying Round, but that could include strong teams from the likes of England, Netherlands, and Belgium. Blackburn Rovers are England's Intertoto representatives and if they qualify from the 3^rd round of the Intertoto Cup they will be very highly ranked since they have a co-efficient of 36.618 for this season. But if three such strong teams were to qualify, Dunfermline would not have to face them in the UEFA 2^nd Qualifying Round because Dunfermline are definite seeds.

The best guess therefore on who Dunfermline 's opponents will be (but which will definitely be subject to change) is based on all seeded teams winning through the first Qualifying Round and that all three Intertoto Cup winners will be higher ranks teams from the aforementioned countries.  If ALL of that happens, Dunfermline 's opponents in the 2^nd Qualifying Round of the UEFA Cup will be one of the following:

Lillestrom SK (Norway)
AIK Stockholm (Sweden)
Helsingborg IF (Sweden)
BK Hacken (Sweden )
Mypa-47 (Finland)
HJK Helsinki (Finland)
Metalurgs Liepaja (Latvia)
Skonta Riga (Latvia)
Suduva Marijampole (Lithuania)
Ekranas Panevezys (Lithuania)

Only other thing to consider is that UEFA move a few teams about in the qualifying rounds to ensure there are even numbers in each of the three geographical regions. This is not known until the night before the actual draw, but often follows the same movements that took place in the Intertoto Cup. One of the possibilities is that a Polish team is moved to the Northern Region, as was done for the Intertoto draw and this would mean that GKS Belchatow may be another possible opponent.