Posted on uefa.com this morning:

“France gets two Intertoto chances

Friday, 9 June 2006

The fixture list for the 2006 UEFA Intertoto Cup has been confirmed after the 49 participating clubs were put forward by their respective associations.

Two from France

France will be the only nation with two teams taking part in the revamped competition after Italy declined to enter a side. A second Ligue 1 club to join Olympique de Marseille will be finalised on 15 June, two days before the first round of the summer competition gets under way. There is also no entrant from Portugal, Liechtenstein and San Marino. The eleven winners of this year's competition will all go forward to the UEFA Cup second qualifying round, to be played on 12/26 August. “

Looks like the Tuscany training camp is a goer.  Can someone from the club please confirm if we'll be playing any meaningful matches while we’re over there?

 

Something odd going on. How can ICT be the first reserve all along then all of a sudden they spring this one on us.

Tell them to stick their competition up their erse, we appear to have been misled from the start, once again Scotland are just shoved aside, we have no standing whatsoever in European football.

:-

The wikipedia site had Auxerre down as Palermo’s replacements yesterday, if not before.

The French media have also been suggesting that Auxerre were first reserve.  I’ve no idea where this idea that we were first reserve came from – SFA ?, Clueless media ? or just a combination of chinese whispers and wishful thinking .  Who knows….

I hope I’m wrong but I can’t see there being much chance of a decent friendly in Italy in early July.  It’s way too early for Italian clubs to be back in training as their season finished weeks after us and the new season doesn’t kick-off until much later.  In fact the Serie B promotion/relegation play-offs are not even finished yet.

dizapointing!

According to this site the replacements will not be confirmed until the end of next week!!!

http://www.uefa.com/competitions/Intertoto...sId=428657.html

I wish this saga was over one way or another.

Can we not just say thanks but no thanks?

That’s pretty weird.  UEFA have changed their story since this morning as the above text was copied directly off exactly the same page of the site.  It looks like the Greek FA have also pulled Larissa out of the competition which might give us an opportunity.

As much as I’d like to play in the competition you really start to wonder if they’re ever going to nail down the entrants.  

Yes it did say that a second French club would be confirmed later, therefore that surely rules us out. I wonder if it was based on a zonal draw, ie if the Danish teams pulled out we would have been entered, but this news is based on the Italians not competing, fraudulent baskets that they are.

Glad you could make sense of it all Don, seems a feckin shambles to me.

Any way, got me hols booked for Tuscany for early July, heh heh.

Gonna be in Pisa around 3rd-10th July ~ C100 ? Rumour has it you just might bump into a few ICT players at that time  ;)

I think, if memory serves correct, that the confusion has arisen due to there being teams entering the competition at different stages. Some teams were entering in the first round and others in the second round. I think we were first reserve for second round entry, whereas the french may have been entering the first round or vice versa.

I would also think ICT, being as they had to finalise their Tuscany trip bookings today, will have withdrawn now. So lets all forget Intertoto and look forward to the new season.   

[move]BRING ON THE GUDGIES[/move]

thank feck!  glad that soap opera is over!

Apparently there is an elite group which includes Germany, France, Italy, Greece and England. The withdrawal came from within that group so first choice of replacement also has to be offered within that group.

Good.  I am convinced participation in this cup would have adversely affected our spl campaign