Red Star Belgrade became the third Yugoslav and second Serbian team to reach a European final, but couldn't defeat the more experienced West German side, who reached their fourth European final out of five in a seven-year span.
Association team allocation
A total of 64 teams from 31 UEFA member associations participate in the 1978–79 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.
East Germany and Bulgaria were the two associations selected to have a third birth for this season, while Poland and Switzerland went back to two qualified teams.
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: Albanian teams returned to European competition in 1978 after five years of absence, but the country choose to not participate in the UEFA Cup, which wouldn't happen until 1981. Luftëtari 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 took place on Tuesdays or Thursdays. Also, both away games for Śląsk Wrocław in the first two rounds were held on a Saturday.
Milan won 4–1 on aggregate.On 23 November 1978, UEFA fined Milan $14,000 for a bribery attempt to the Scottish referee John Gordon and linesmen Rollo Kyle and David McCartney (Italian club took the officials to shop for free the day before the game). Curiously, UEFA did not sanction the referee at all, however, Scottish Football Association suspended him.
