It’s that time of year when it all starts again, a European football competition going through the qualifying rounds and featuring matches containing teams you’ve never heard of from far flung countries across the continent. I’m talking of course about the largely unnoticed Regions’ Cup, Europe’s top competition for amateur footballers. A cup this year in which the format has slightly confusingly seen some second qualifying round matches played before the first qualifying round ones.
The second round seeing eight groups of four teams play each other once, with each group winner getting a place in the final tournament of two groups of four, with the two winners from those groups then meeting each other in the overall final. The reason though that the rounds seem to have started in the wrong order are that only five of the eight groups had four teams in them, the spare place in the other three then being taken by the winner of the two pre-qualifying groups plus the best second placed team in them.
Personally I think they should have that in an A Level Mathematics paper, although people from Eastern Northern Ireland and North Wales may have an advantage there as their teams are both represented in the pre-qualifying round. Those sides also playing each other as they are both in group B alongside South East Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (give us an ‘s’, give us an ‘o’, give us a ‘u’……) and Hestrafors from Sweden. The game between the Welsh and the Northern Irish taking place in Macedonia at the beginning of September with all six group games played there over a quick five day period.
As far as other British or Irish representation in the competition is concerned West Central Scotland are involved, while Leinster and Munster, plus Jersey FC are in the same group which contains only three teams at the moment, so that could be a real British Isles job if Eastern Northern Ireland or North Wales were to drop into it as successful pre-qualifying round sides. The biennial tournament having last time out in Portugal in 2010-11 seen Leinster and Munster beaten 2-1 in the final by hosts Braga. Guernsey and the Gwent County FA having also been involved that time around, but not this.
That the only time any team from the British Isles has finished in the top four places in the seven tournaments since the competition was relaunched in 1999 for regions as opposed to the countries format that had taken place in the 1960s and 1970s. As far as player eligibility is concerned the tournament is open for players who have never signed a professional contract, have never played in a professional league, have never played in the top division of their country’s league system and have never played in any other UEFA competition matches, excluding the under-17, under-19 and under-21 European Championships.
You would think that checking all that would consist of a phenomenal amount of paperwork and you’d have to guess that somewhere along the line someone has managed to slip through the net as a ringer. Another rule to adhere by being that players have to be over 19 and under 40 on their first appearance in the competition. You’d better remember your passport too as according to the lengthy list of tournament regulations a visual check of every player against their passport will take place before their first game, with this check taking place at mealtime at the team’s hotel, although the rules don’t go as far as specifying whether it will be at breakfast, lunch or dinner, or even high tea of course.
As far as the match timetable goes for the players this time around, one second round group of four has already had its mini-tournament with host Belarusian team FC Isloch topping the table with three wins from three. All the other pre-qualifying and second round matches though take place in two month blocks between the end of this month and October and March and April next year. The finals of the eighth UEFA Regions' Cup then being staged in the summer of 2013 by one of the eight teams who make it through the two qualifying rounds.