The 1955–56 European Cup was the first season of the

European Cup The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by top-division European clubs. The competition begins with a round robi ...

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's premier club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament. It was won by

Real Madrid Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional Football club (association football), football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, th ...

, who defeated

Reims Reims ( ; ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French Departments of France, department of Marne (department), Marne, and the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 12th most populous city in Fran ...

4–3 in the

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, on 13 June 1956. UEFA had been officially inaugurated on 15 June 1954 in

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, Switzerland after consultation between the Italian, French, and Belgian associations. The first round pairings were fixed by the organisers and not drawn as would be the case for all future European Cup matches. The clubs participating in the first season of the European Cup were selected by French football magazine '' L'Equipe'' on the basis that they were representative and prestigious clubs in Europe. When the tournament started,

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AC Milan (), commonly referred to as Milan or AC Milan () mainly outside of Italy, is an Italian professional Football club (association football), football club based in Milan, Lombardy. Founded in 1899, the club competes in the Serie A, the top tie ...

, Rot-Weiss Essen,

Djurgården Djurgården ( or ) or, more officially, , is an island in central Stockholm, Sweden. Djurgården is home to historical buildings and monuments, museums, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, the open-air museum Skansen, the small resident ...

and AGF were the reigning champions of their respective national leagues. English champions Chelsea initially agreed to compete and were drawn against Swedish side Djurgården; however, under pressure from the

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, who saw the tournament as a distraction to domestic football, they later withdrew from the competition, and were replaced by

Gwardia Warsaw WKS Gwardia Warszawa () was a Polish sports club based in Warsaw. The club was founded in 1948. The club was dissolved in 2018. Football It participated in the Polish 1st League from 1953 to 1960 (8 seasons), 1962–1966 (5 seasons), 1967–19 ...

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. In addition, Holland Sport, Honvéd and AB rejected the opportunity to represent the Netherlands, Hungary and Denmark, being replaced by

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, Vörös Lobogó and AGF respectively. Scottish champions

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were controversially overlooked by the SFA in favour of Hibernian who finished in fifth place. They were considered one of the best teams in Scotland, having won the Scottish title in 1950–51 and 1951–52, but the main reason they were invited was because they were the only team in the country to install floodlights on their grounds. Dynamo Moscow, the champions of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, did not participate due to climatic restrictions. This was also the only UEFA tournament to include a representative of

Saarland Saarland (, ; ) is a state of Germany in the southwest of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the smallest in ...

, unified into

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

in 1957.

Teams

A total of 16 teams participated in the competition.

Bracket

First round

First leg

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Second leg

''Partizan won 8–5 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Real Madrid won 7–0 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Djurgården won 4–1 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Hibernian won 5–1 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Vörös Lobogó won 10–4 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Reims won 4–2 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Rapid Wien won 6–2 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Milan won 7–5 on aggregate.''

Quarter-finals

First leg

---- ---- ---- Note – differences in information: RSSSF website indicates that the goal scored on 26th minute was scored by Robert Körner, while UEFA website indicates that it was scored by his younger brother Alfred Körner.

Second leg

''Hibernian won 4–1 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Reims won 8–6 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Real Madrid won 4–3 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Milan won 8–3 on aggregate.''

Semi-finals

First leg

----

Second leg

''Reims won 3–0 on aggregate.'' ---- ''Real Madrid won 5–4 on aggregate.''

Final

Top goalscorers

Notes

References

External links

1955–56 season at UEFA website1955–56 All matches – season at UEFA website
* All scorers 1955–56 European Cup according t
protocols UEFA
*

– results and line-ups (archive) {{DEFAULTSORT:1955-56 European Cup UEFA Champions League seasons

Cup A cup is an open-top vessel (container) used to hold liquids for drinking, typically with a flattened hemispherical shape, and often with a capacity of about . Cups may be made of pottery (including porcelain), glass, metal, wood, stone, pol ...