1979–80 UEFA Cup
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | 19 September 1979 – 21 May 1980 |
| Teams | 64 |
| Final positions | |
| Champions | Eintracht Frankfurt (1st title) |
| Runners-up | Borussia Mönchengladbach |
| Tournament statistics | |
| Matches played | 126 |
| Goals scored | 352 (2.79 per match) |
| Attendance | 3,074,766 (24,403 per match) |
| Top scorer(s) | Dieter Hoeneß (Bayern Munich) Harald Nickel (Borussia Mönchengladbach) 7 goals each |
← 1978–79 1980–81 → | |
The 1979–80 UEFA Cup was the ninth season of the UEFA Cup, the third-tier club football competition organised by UEFA. The final was played in West Germany over two legs, at the Bökelbergstadion., Mönchengladbach, and at the Waldstadion, Frankfurt. It was won by Eintracht Frankfurt, who defeated title holders and fellow West German side Borussia Mönchengladbach on the away goals rule after a 3–3 aggregate draw to claim their first UEFA Cup title.
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.