The UEFA Champions League (also known as the European Cup or CL) is a seasonal club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) since 1955 for the most successful football clubs in Europe. The prize, the European Champion Clubs' Cup, is considered the most prestigious international club trophy in the sport.
| UEFA Champions League |
|---|
 2007-08 UEFA Champions League
|
| File:UEFA Champions League logo 2.svg |
| Founded |
| 1955 |
| Continent |
| Europe (UEFA) |
| Number of Teams |
| 32 (Group Stage) |
| Current Champions (2006-07) |
  AC Milan
|
| 2008 final to be held in |
Luzhniki Stadium Moscow
|
| Most successful club |
File:Real Madrid.png  Real Madrid C.F.(9 times champions) |
| Website |
| UEFA Champions League |
| Television Coverage |
| List of Television Broadcasters |
The UEFA Champions League is separate from the UEFA Cup and the defunct Cup Winners' Cup.
The tournament consists of several stages and begins with three preliminary knockout qualifying rounds. The sixteen teams emerging from the preliminary rounds take part in the final knock-out stage, which starts in late February and ends with the final match in May.
The current holders of the UEFA Champions League trophy are A.C. Milan, who beat Liverpool F.C. 2-1 at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece on 23 May 2007.
Moscow is scheduled to host its first European Cup final for the 2007-08 season. However, due to an upcoming review of venues eligible to host the Champions League Final (announced by UEFA President Michel Platini on June 6 2007) this decision could be reversed, and a stadium with enhanced turnstile and ticketing technology chosen instead.[1]
History
The tournament was inaugurated in 1955, at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L'Équipe Gabriel Hanot,[2] as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, abbreviated to European Cup.
The competition began in 1955/56 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. This qualification system continued until 1992. In the 1992–93 season, the tournament was renamed to UEFA Champions League and eligibility was expanded to include not just domestic champions but also the best performing runners up according to UEFA's coefficient ranking list[3]. In UEFA's coefficient system, a team finishing second in the Spanish La Liga would be more deserving of an automatic place in the Champions League than a team finishing first in, for example, Polish Orange Ekstraklasa. As a result, the system was restructured to force "weaker" national champions to qualify for the group stages, while other, "stronger" national runners-up would automatically get places.
The competition system has been undergoing changes since the 1991/92 season (see history). The current system was adopted in 2003.
Between 1960 and 2004 the winner of the tournament qualified for the now defunct Intercontinental Cup (against the winner of the Copa Libertadores of South America). Since then, with FIFA taking over, the winner automatically quaifies for the FIFA Club World Cup with other winners of continental club championships.
Celtic Football Club of Glasgow, Scotland are the only team ever to win the European Cup with completely homegrown talent with every player born within a 30 mile radius of their stadium, Celtic Park.
Qualification
The UEFA Champions league is open to the league champions of all UEFA member associations (except Liechtenstein, which has no league competition), as well as to the clubs finishing from second to fourth position in the strongest leagues. Since January 2007 the two lowest-ranked league competitions (currently the Andorra and San Marino leagues) can also represent their domestic champions in the Champions League.
The number of places in the competition depends on the association's rank in the UEFA coefficients table:
- associations ranked 1 to 3 have four positions,
- associations ranked 4 to 6 have three positions,
- associations ranked 7 to 15 have two positions,
- associations ranked 16 or lower have one position.
An association's rank also determines the stage at which the clubs enter the competition. For example, the three highest-ranked associations have two places in the group stage (for champions and runners-up) and two in the third qualifying round (for third and fourth-placed teams), whereas the lowest-ranked associations have only one place in the first qualifying round for their champions. Nine highest-ranked associations have at least one automatic place in the group stage.
An additional place in the group stage is reserved for the title-holders, in case they don't qualify via their domestic league. However, an association is limited to sending at most four clubs for a season. This means that if the title-holders come from a league given four positions, but finish out of the top four, it will take the place of the fourth placed team. The fourth placed team will go to the UEFA Cup.
In addition to sporting criteria, any club must be licensed by its national association to participate in the Champions league. To obtain a license, club must meet certain stadium, infrastructure and finance requirements.
There was controversy when Liverpool won the competition in 2004/2005, but finished fifth, and thus outside the top four in the Premiership. The Football Association ruled that Everton F.C. (who finished fourth) would get the final spot. However, UEFA came to an agreement that both Merseyside rivals would be allowed to enter the competition with Liverpool starting from the first qualifying round and Everton starting from the third qualifying round.
Liverpool duly became the first team to negotiate all three rounds of qualification and reach the Champions League group phase (a feat matched by Artmedia Bratislava of Slovakia in the same season) and went on to become the first team to reach the knockout phase (Quarter Finals) from the first qualifying round, while Everton were eliminated from both the Champions League and UEFA Cup competitions in the qualifying rounds during the same season, again another first.
FC Barcelona, Manchester United and FC Porto are the teams that have appeared most often in the group stages: twelve each. However, each has won the Champions League only once since the group stage was established.
The stages
The tournament consists of several stages and begins with three preliminary knockout qualifying rounds. Different teams start in different rounds, according to their position in domestic league and the UEFA coefficients of their league, while the sixteen top ranked teams spread across the biggest domestic leagues qualify directly.
In the subsequent preliminary round, participating teams are paired, with aggregate winners proceeding into the next round. Qualifying rounds span from mid-July to late August. The losers of the third qualifying round are transferred to the UEFA Cup, while the sixteen winners of the final qualifying round are joined by the sixteen teams who have qualified directly, to participate in the group stage.
Teams are drawn into eight groups of four teams, each team playing every other team in the group twice (home and away). The group stage is played between mid-September and early December. The teams finishing third in their groups are transferred to the UEFA Cup, while the top two teams from every group qualify for the next round. Here the sixteen remaining teams take part in the knock-out stage, which starts in late February and ends with the final match in May.
All qualifying rounds and knock-out ties are two-legged, with each team hosting one match. The team which scores the greater aggregate number of goals qualifies for the next round. The away goals rule applies. Extra time and penalty kicks are used to determine the winner, if necessary. An exception is the final, which is a single match played at a predetermined venue.
The draws are currently structured to ensure that clubs representing the same national association cannot play each other until the quarter-finals. In addition, seeding of the teams according to their UEFA coefficients is used. The competition system has been undergoing changes since the 1991/92 season (see history). The current system was adopted in 2003.
Champions League finals
The Champions League final is the most important match of the season in European club football. The stadium to host the final is selected by UEFA two years before the match.
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
The winning club gets possession of the trophy at the awards ceremony, but must return it to UEFA headquarters two months before the following year's final. UEFA gives the winners a scaled-down replica of the trophy to keep permanently, and winning clubs are free to make replicas of the trophy as long as they are clearly marked as replicas and are no larger than 80% of the size of the actual trophy. However, the current competition rules also specify that the actual trophy will be permanently awarded to a team that wins three consecutive years or five times in all.[4]
Five clubs have been awarded the UEFA badge of honour and the right to keep the trophy permanently:
- Real Madrid, who won the first five competitions from 1956 to 1960,
- Ajax Amsterdam, who won consecutively in 1971–1973,and again in 1995
- Bayern Munich, who won consecutively in 1974–1976, and again in 2001
- AC Milan, who won for the fifth time in 1994,
- Liverpool, whose 2005 win was their fifth overall.
The first European Cup/UEFA Champions League final to be competed between two clubs from the same country was in 2000, when Spanish giants Real Madrid and Valencia reached the final. This was followed in 2003 when Italian giants AC Milan and Juventus reached the final, making it only two intra-national finals since its inception in 1955.
Records and statistics
Anthem
The UEFA Champions League Anthem, officially titled simply as "Champions League", is an arrangement by Tony Britten of Georg Frideric Handel's "Zadok the Priest" from the Coronation Anthems. UEFA commissioned Britten in 1992 to arrange their hymn, who took the beginning of "Zadok the Priest" as a starting point for his arrangement. The piece was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and sung by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chorus in the three official languages used by UEFA: English, German, and French. The hymn's chorus is played before each UEFA Champions League game, as well as at the beginning and end of television broadcasts of the matches. The complete hymn is about three minutes long, and has two short verses and the chorus. The hymn has never been released commercially in its original version. However, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chorus can be heard singing the original "Zadok the Priest" on the 2002 album "World Soccer Anthems". Additionally, Polish trance/dance duo Kalwi & Remi released a remixed version entitled "Victory", which contains vocal and musical interpolations from the original, in late 2006.
Financial
UEFA Champions League is a highly profitable competition for the clubs that reach the group stage. UEFA distributes part of the revenue obtained from television deals between these clubs. For example, the payments for the 2004/05 competition ranged from €3.8m (Sparta Prague) to €30.6 million (Liverpool).[5] UEFA estimates the amount of money to be given to the 32 participants of the 2005/06 group stage at €430 million.[6] Clubs make additional money from ticket sales, corporate hospitality, merchandising and so on.
See also
- European Cup and Champions League history
- European Cup and Champions League finals for a table of all winners and runners-up
- List of UEFA Champions League winning players for a table of all winning players
- European Cup and Champions League records and statistics for further detail
- European Super Cup
- UEFA Cup
- UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
- UEFA Intertoto Cup
- UEFA Club Football Awards
- UEFA Team of the Year
- European football records
- G-14
- UEFA Champions League 2006/2007 Games
References
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JPYUYYPJEJ0K1QFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/sport/2007/06/06/sfnliv06.xml
- ^ Matthew Spiro (2006-05-12). "Hats off to Hanot". UEFA.com. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
- ^ http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/format/index.html
- ^ "Regulations for the UEFA Champions League 2006/07" (PDF). UEFA. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
- ^ "UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - DISTRIBUTION 2002/2003" (PDF). UEFA. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
- ^ "Higher Champions League revenue". UEFA.com. 2005-09-26. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
External links
- UEFA Official Site
- MP3 of the UEFA Champions League Music
- RSSSF European Cups Archive
- UEFA European Cup Football - independent site with regularly updated statistics including club and country rankings, tournament seedings, and match results.
- Champions league final - Live broadcast
- European Cup History