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The UEFA Europa League (UEFA Cup) is one of the greatest and most respected tournaments in all of European football. It began in 1971 as a replacement to the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, a tournament established to promote international trade fairs. Initially friendly matches were held between teams located in cities that held trade fairs. Out of these friendly matches a more regular and competitive tournament grew.

The UEFA Europa League evolved from the UEFA Cup, which itself was conceived by Switzerland’s Ernst Thommen who, along with Italy’s Ottorino Barrasi and England’s Sir Stanley Rous, later FIFA President, created a tournament for representative sides from European cities that regularly held trade fairs.

Forerunner
This forerunner to the UEFA Cup, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, was founded on 18 April 1955, two weeks after the founding of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. The first Fairs Cup involved teams from Barcelona, Basle, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Leipzig, London, Milan and Zagreb. The original tournament lasted three years, with matches timed to coincide with trade fairs. Barcelona, using players purely from FC Barcelona, beat a London representative side 8-2 on aggregate in the final.

Club Involvement
For the second tournament the organisers reverted to club participation but the teams still had to come from cities staging trade fairs. Sixteen clubs took part in the 1958-60 tournament, after which it was staged on an annual basis. By 1962 the number of entrants had risen to 32; there are now over 100. In its early years, teams from southern Europe dominated, notably Barcelona, who won it three times, and Valencia CF who won it twice. In 1968 Leeds United AFC became the first northern European club to win the trophy, heralding a run of six successive wins by English sides.

Name Change
The fifth of these was in 1971/72, won by Tottenham Hotspur FC, and the first to be known as the UEFA Cup. The change of name was recognition of the fact the competition was now run by UEFA and no longer associated with the trade fairs. During the 1970s German, Dutch, Belgian and Swedish sides began to successfully compete with the English and between 1968 and 1984 only one team from the south – Juventus in 1977 – managed to disrupt the dominance of the northern Europeans.

Italian Success
But following back-to-back victories by Real Madrid CF in the mid-1980s, Italian clubs took control in the 1990s. Starting with SSC Napoli’s victory in 1989, Italian sides won the UEFA Cup eight times in eleven seasons, with FC Internazionale Milano winning it three times, before Galatasaray AŞ claimed it as Turkey’s first European club prize in 2000. With the exception of 1964 and 1965, the final had, like the previous rounds, always been a two-legged, affair. The format changed permanently to a one-tie final in 1998 when Inter beat S.S. Lazio 3-0 at the Parc des Princes in Paris. Inter, Juventus and Liverpool share the record of three UEFA Cup final successes apiece.

Competitions Merge
From 1999/00, domestic cup winners also qualified for the UEFA Cup after the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup was disbanded. In addition, clubs eliminated from the third qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League and the eight third-placed finishers at the end of the group stage of the same competition entered the competition. A group stage was introduced for the first time in 2004/05 involving 40 teams playing four games.

UEFA Europa League
On 26 September 2008, the UEFA Executive Committee decided that from 2009/10 the competition would become the UEFA Europa League. This reflected a change to the format previously agreed, with the group stage expanding to 48 clubs, who would play six matches on a home-and-away format similar to the UEFA Champions League.

Bertoni Trophy
The trophy itself, which weighs 15kg and is silver on a yellow marble plinth, was designed and crafted by the Bertoni workshops in Milan for the 1972 final. It has no handles, its beauty lying in its simplicity. Just above the plinth, a group of players seem to be jostling for the ball. In fact they are supporting the octagonal cup which is emblazoned with the UEFA emblem.

Related contents:

1. UEFA Champions League
2. Scottish Premier League
3. English Premier League

UEFA Champions League live online is the only chance for you to never miss you club’s game. You can watch live Champions League football streams whether you are at home or at work, or on the way. No extra hardware needed, no ridiculous monthly or per game fees – turn on your laptop, connect to the Internet and plunge into live UEFA Champions League football.

The Champions League competition is one of, if not the, most prestigious competitions in all of sports. There are many best in the world competitions that pit country against country, but only one that puts the greatest league champions against each other. The battle for the European Champions Clubs’ Cup has had a storied history and has featured some of the greatest matches of all time. There have been ten different countries to win the Champions League, with Italy, Spain, and Germany tied at the top with eleven wins each. The best way to see what the cup means and how important it is to all the teams in Europe is to look at how teams qualify.

Qualification for the UEFA Champions League

Qualification for the cup is awarded on a nation by nation basis. Depending on how successful a country is and what their UEFA coefficient is will determine how many teams they get to send to the UEFA Cup. Ranks one through three will get four Champions League teams. Four through six will get three teams for this league as well, and countries ranked seven through fifteen get two teams each and associations ranked sixteen or lower get one position. The determination of what teams get into the Champions league is determined by the individual countries with it usually being awarded to the top team in the top flight league. It can get complicated between the Champions League and the Europa League, but the Champions league is by far the most prestigious league.

For the most part teams that finish from 1st to 4th in the top leagues will advance to the UEFA Champions league. This final ranking spot will also determine whether or not a team has to play in the group stage. Teams that do not have automatic berths into the group stage will have to play through various qualification rounds. In addition to that, because of the high level of competition in the top football leagues it is possible, and has happened in the past, that a previous winner may not even qualify for the cup the following year. There is some flexibility in the rules for placing teams and in these cases exceptions have been made and teams allowed to enter the competition that normally would not have been there.

The competition begins with three preliminary knockout rounds. These knockout rounds slowly whittle the competing field down to the twenty two teams that compete in the group stage. This is the fairest way to give all the teams from around the world a fair shot at getting into the tournament without putting undue stress on the top teams. It is no ones best interest to Real Madrid blow out some team from Turkey, however the team from Turkey should be able to earn the right to play in the final.

Past Champions of the Champions League

Real Madrid currently has the most titles in the Champions League with nine. They are followed by AC Milan who has seven titles. These teams have also been runners up many times over. These are the powerhouse teams that will continue to be big players in the tournament for years to come. While this is interesting to many people, perhaps some of the greatest triumphs have been by the unexpected heroes, the teams that no one thought could win it all.

Perhaps the most famous and unlikely was the Football Club from Steaua Bucuresti, a Romanian team. They hold the distinction of being the only Eastern European team to win the championship. You may think that they were a flash in the pan, but they did very well in the tournament the year prior. One huge advantage for Steaua Bucharest was that there were not English clubs in the cup that year because of the ban from European competition after the Heysel Stadium disaster. With Manchester United, Liverpool, and Everton not being present the way was much easier for a smaller club to rise up and knock off one of the bigger things.

One of the other things that Steaua Bucharest had going for them was an outstanding goaltender, Helmuth Duckadam. The final came down to a shootout and was able to save all four of Barcelona’s penalty shots to win the cup for his squad.

Stories like the one about Helmuth Duckadam and Steaua Bucharest are not unique to the Champions League. Each and every year there is a story of a great team rising from nothing to go on to compete against the big clubs and make a run at the championship. If you look at the history of the finals and different group play match ups it tells a story of giants fighting David, with many times the small teams coming on top against amazing odds.

What the Champions Cup Means

The Champions League, Champion of the Champions

If you are unfamiliar with UEFA, then it is hard to really describe what this tournament is all about. Imagine your favourite sport being played in every country you can think of with all the champions from the different leagues meeting to play for one championship. No matter what your sport is, you can probably see how something like this would be exciting. Over the years some of the greatest match ups have been between powerhouses of great leagues. Seeing Real Madrid go against Manchester united, or Barcelona against Juventus is what this trophy and league are all about. In order to get in you need to be a Champion and when you win you are the Champion of the Champions. There is nothing else in the world that compares with this.

Related contents:

1. UEFA Europa League
2. Scottish Premier League
3. Italian Serie A