European Cup And Champions League History

The history of the European Cup and UEFA Champions League spans over sixty years of competition, finding winners and runners-up from all over the continent.

Beginnings

Early tournaments

The first time when champions of two European leagues met was in what was nicknamed the 1895 World Championship, when English champions Sunderland beat Scottish champions Heart of Midlothian 5–3. Ironically, the Sunderland lineup in the 1895 World Championship consisted entirely of Scottish players – Scottish players who moved to England to play professionally in those days were known as the Scotch Professors.

Prior to that, other "Football World Championships" took place, although those were between Scottish and English cup winners, as the respective leagues were not yet established.

Club competitions between teams from European countries trace their origins back as far as 1897, when the ''Challenge Cup'' was founded as a competition between clubs from Austria-Hungary that under normal circumstances would not meet in competition. This competition ran until 1911, with its last winners, Wiener Sportclub, retaining the trophy. Simultaneously, English and Scottish clubs competed in the Football World Championship. The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, Italy, involving clubs from Italy, Germany, Switzerland and England.

The Challenge Cup is considered to be the forerunner of the first true pan-European club competition, the Mitropa Cup, which came about following the demise of Austria-Hungary after World War I. At that time, the various nations of central Europe were introducing professional leagues. The introduction of an international club tournament was intended to assist the new professional clubs financially. The Mitropa Cup was first played for in 1927.

An early attempt to create a cup for national champion clubs of Europe was made by Swiss club Servette in 1930. The tournament called "Coupe des Nations" was a great success and the champions of the ten major European football nations of the time were invited. The cup was won by Hungarian club Újpest. Despite the great success, the tournament was never organised again, due to financial issues.

Following World War II, the reduced standing of the Mitropa Cup led to the foundation of a new competition, the Latin Cup, for teams from France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. This competition was played as a mini-tournament at the end of each season by the league champions from each country. Another tournament was the Coppa Grasshoppers played in 1952 to 1957.

Creation of the European Cup

The '' Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones'', or "South American Championship of Champions", kicked off in 1948 after years of deliberation and organisation and set into motion the antecedent of the Copa Libertadores. French sports journalist Jacques Ferran became fascinated with the 1948 South American idea of a continental club champions league. The UEFA document on the history of the European Cup confirms that Jacques Ferran and Gabriel Hanot, journalists for the French sports newspaper ''L'Équipe'', were the founding fathers of the European Cup. In interviews to the Brazilian sports TV programme ''Globo Esporte'' in 2015 and Chilean newspaper ''El Mercúrio'' in 2018, Jacques Ferran said that the South American Championship of Champions was the inspiration for the European Cup: "How could Europe, which wanted to be ahead of the rest of the world, not be able to accomplish a competition of the same kind of the South American one? We needed to follow that example."

The summer of 1953 saw Wolverhampton Wanderers play a friendly match against a South African XI to begin a remarkable run of victories over the next months. Wolves played a series of friendlies against foreign opposition such as Racing Club of Argentina, Spartak Moscow of the Soviet Union, among others, before meeting Honvéd of Hungary in a game televised live on the BBC
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