UEFA Champions League

"European Cup" redirects here. For other uses, see European Cup (disambiguation)

The UEFA Champions League is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for the most successful football clubs in Europe. It is one of the most prestigious club trophies in the sport along with its South American counterpart Copa Libertadores. It has a global audience of more than a billion people.

The tournament was inaugurated in 1955 at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and L'Équipe editor Gabriel Hanot, as a competition for winners of the European National football (soccer) premier leagues under the name of the European Cup, but since the 1992–1993 season the competing teams have been the top-ranked teams of Europe and the tournament has been renamed the UEFA Champions League, though some teams competing have never been champions in their respective countries. The UEFA Champions League is not to be confused with the UEFA Cup, the secondary championship for European club teams.

The current holders of the UEFA Champions League trophy are Barcelona, who beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Stade de France in St-Denis, Paris on 17 May 2006 after coming from 0-1 behind against the 10 men of Arsenal.

Format

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 are directly qualified.

In each 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.

They 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 stages, which starts in late February and end with the final match in May.

All qualifying round 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.

Qualification

The UEFA Champions league is open to the league champions of all UEFA member associations (except Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino), as well as to the clubs finishing from second to fourth position in the strongest leagues.

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 highest-ranked association has 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 licence, club must meet certain stadium, infrastructure and finance requirements.

There was controversy when Liverpool won the competition in 2004/2005, but finished 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 became the first team to negotiate all three rounds of qualification and reach the Champions League knockout phase (although this feat was matched by Artmedia Bratislava of Slovakia in the same season).

Manchester United and FC Porto are the teams that have appeared most often in the group stages: twelve each.

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.

The latest UEFA Champions League final was held at Stade de France on 17 May 2006 between Arsenal and Barcelona, which Barcelona won 2-1. In this spectacular match, Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann was sent off and two late goals by Samuel Eto'o and Juliano Belletti secured victory for the Catalan side. The 2006-07 season final will take place at the Athens Olympic Stadium. Nine candidates are bidding to host the 2007–2008 season final - London, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Porto, Lisbon, Moscow, and Seville .

Real Madrid have won this competition nine times. The next most successful teams are A.C. Milan (six titles), Liverpool F.C. (five titles), FC Bayern Munich and Ajax Amsterdam (four titles). For complete list of the winners, see European Cup and Champions League finals or European Cup and Champions League statistics.

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 .

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,
Bayern Munich, who won consecutively in 1974–1976,
A.C. Milan, who won for the fifth time in 1994,
Liverpool, whose 2005 win was their fifth overall.

History

Originally known as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, or simply 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 1997. From the 1997/98 season, the rules were changed to provide the cup with more exposure (and the extra sponsorship money that came with it), and to try to make it more "exciting". Teams other than national champions were allowed to compete, based on the relative strength of the football in that nation - from UEFA's point of view, 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, Poland. 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 is organised and run annually in a similar manner to the Copa Libertadores in South America.

Hymn

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.

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) . UEFA estimates the amount of money to be given to the 32 participants of the 2005/06 group stage at €430 million . Clubs make additional money from ticket sales, corporate hospitality, merchandising and so on.

References

External links

International club football competitions | UEFA Champions League | 1955 establishments

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