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Champions
League index
History
Champions League
In
1954 English Champions Wolverhampton Wanderers beat the Hungarian side
Honved 3-2 and declared themselves world champions. This was going too far
for the French journalist Gabriel Hanot who decided to invite 16 teams to
take part in a knockout tournament - the European Cup was born. Real
Madrid proved to be the strongest team at the end of the series of home
and away matches, and were to remain so for the next 4 years.
In 1958 it
was expected that Matt Busby's 'Babies' Manchester United would break the
Spanish monopoly but the team were wiped out in the now legedary plane
crash. It wasn't until 1960 that Benfica famous team with "Black
Pearl" Eusebio broke Real's grip. Southern Europe continued to
dominate the tournament, especially Helenio Herrera's Internazionale,
until 1966.
Finally the Brits got a word in - first Celtic and then
Manchester United won the cup before it went to Italy again, this time to
AC Milan. It would be 15 years before the cup would go south again.
Feyenoord won the first cup of the 70's but it was Ajax ( under the
brilliant Johan Cruijff and Bayern Munich ( under the elegant tactician
Frans Beckenbauer) who would share the cup for most of the decade - both
teams winning it 3 times in a row.
As the decade drew to a close Liverpool
and Nottingham announced English intentions to lay claim to the cup.
Between 1975 and 1985 English teams appeared in 9 of the 11 finals,
Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and AstonVilla carried the cup home to
English shores 7 times between them.
The 39 Italian deaths caused by
Liverpool hooligans in pre-match violence at the Heizel stadium in 1985
brought an end to to their supremacy. Platini scored the winning goal for
Juventus in that blood stained arena, which saw the excommunication of
British clubs. Towards the end of the 1980's the climate in European
football changed as commercialisation began to exert a much stronger
influence on the sport. The larger clubs were expecting greater financial
rewards for taking part in the tournament and the breakdown of communism
in Eastern Europe meant there were even more high quality teams wanting to
take part in European football. The richer European nations wanted the
guarantee of continued media attention and high level footballing battles
for their clubs - and so, in 1992, the Champions League was born
with Olympique Marseille its first winner.
The form of the championship
has been changed in the course of the 1990's to allow more teams than just
the no.1's from participating countries to take part. Dominance by any one
club or country is now almost impossible. The importance of television
rights also grew enormously in economic importance as the decade
progressed. Although the structure of the Champions League is still
evolving the prospect of a Super League seems more and more likely, while
the chance of a small club ever winning the cup again grows smaller all
the time. For the time being the future of European football will be clear
only to crystal ball gazers. |
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