2016–17 EHF Cup
| 2016–17 | |
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| Tournament information | |
|---|---|
| Sport | Handball |
| Dates | 2 September 2016–21 May 2017 |
| Host(s) | Frisch Auf Göppingen (Final four) |
| Venue(s) | EWS Arena (Final four) |
| Teams | 57+6 (Qualification stage) 16 (Group stage) |
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The 2016–17 EHF Cup is the 36th edition of the EHF Cup, the second most important European handball club competition organised by the European Handball Federation (EHF), and the fifth edition since the merger with the EHF Cup Winners' Cup.
For the 2016–17 EHF Cup, the national federations were allocated places according to their 2016–17 EHF country ranking, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 2012–13 to 2014–15.
Apart from the allocation based on the country coefficients, federations may have more or less teams participating in the EHF Cup, as noted below:
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
The schedule of the competition is as follows (all draws are held at the EHF headquarters in Vienna, Austria):
The qualification stage consists of three rounds, which are played as two-legged ties using a home-and-away system. In the draws for each round, teams are allocated into two pots, with teams from Pot 1 facing teams from Pot 2. The winners of each pairing (highlighted in bold) qualify for the following round.
For each round, teams listed first played the first leg at home. In some cases, teams agreed to play both matches at the same venue.
A total of 30 teams entered the draw for the first qualification round, which was held on Tuesday, 19 July 2016. The draw seeding pots were composed as follows:
The first legs were played on 2–3 September and the second legs were played on 4 and 10–11 September 2015.
A total of 32 teams entered the draw for the second qualifying round, which was held after the draw for the first qualifying round on Tuesday, 19 July 2016. The draw seeding pots were composed as follows:
The first legs were played on 8–9 October and the second legs were played on 9 and 15–16 October 2016.
A total of 32 teams entered the draw for the third qualifying round, which was held on Tuesday, 18 October 2016. The draw seeding pots were composed as follows:
The first legs were played on 18–20 and 23 November and the second legs were played on 25–27 November 2016.
The draw of the EHF Cup group stage took place on Thursday, 1 December 2016. The 16 teams allocated into four pots will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The country protection rule was applied, i.e. two clubs from the same country could not face each other in the same group.
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