The History of the Champions League Creation and Its Winners

The UEFA Champions League is also known as the UEFA Cup or UEFA Champions League. It is a competition of European football teams, created from an idea of the Swiss Ernst Thommen, the Italian Ottorino Barrasi (both future vice-presidents of FIFA) and the Englishman Sir Stanley Rous, who was the president of FIFA from 1961 to 1974.

 

These three men conceived the idea of creating a tournament for the most representative cities and clubs of Europe. The tournament was founded on April 18, 1955. It originally lasted 3 years and participant clubs were from Barcelona, Basel, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Frankfurt, Leipzig, London, Milan and Zagreb.

 

This tournament is the most important European Football tournament in the world at club level organized by UEFA (European Union of National Associations).

 

History of the UEFA Champions League

In 1954 the English team Wolverhampton toured Europe playing with most of the biggest and most prestigious clubs on the continent. They got very good results, beating the Hungarian Giants of Honved, with Puskas, Hidegkuti and Kocsis.

 

The English press celebrated the success by publishing that they were "the best team in the world" or "the best in Europe". The front pages of these newspapers enraged French journalist Gabriel Hanot, who declared that there were at least three better European clubs than English: Real Madrid, Saint Etienne and AC Milan.

 

Hanot, together with Jacques Ferran, also proposed through a column in "L Equipe" a European championship for clubs.

 

In April 1955 UEFA gave approval for the competition. It was held for the first time in this year, and was known as the European Champion Clubs Cup until 1991. It was renamed as the UEFA Champions League in 1992. The tournament has been held annually since 1955 and the first Champions League winners were Spain Real Madrid players, being the club with the most titles, 13 in total: 6 in the old format and 7 in the new. The club also holds the record for finals played in, with 16 UCL finals.

 

Classification

The winning teams of the league competition of each country are classified and in the strongest European leagues (defined by the UEFA coefficient), the runners-up are also classified directly or even since the 2009-2010 season the third parties of the three strongest leagues. In addition, some places are reserved for teams that do not manage to enter directly, these teams play a previous round to determine which ones will finally be able to play the Champions League.

 

Since the 2006-2007 season, the winning team of the Champions League is not guaranteed a place in the championship next year, as it depends on the criteria of the federation of each country to choose the representatives.

 

Liverpool FC, champions in the 2004-2005 edition, failed to reach the top four in their league, thus failing to qualify for a place in the qualifying round. UEFA asked the English League for Liverpool FC to be England's fourth team, a request that was denied, since it is the local leagues that decide the representatives, taking as a reference the classification in the league, which is not an obligation.

 

Finally, UEFA had to modify the regulations so that Liverpool FC could play the competition, so it did not represent England and Chelsea could be measured in the first round (teams from the same country cannot meet until the quarterfinals end).