The present tournament called Champions League, originally kwown as Champions Cup, started as an original idea of the French journalist Gabriel Hanot, editor of the sports magazine L'Équipe. He proposed... >>> ("The Beginning of Champions Cup", by Santiago Velasco)

"Short review of European Cups - first and last winners" >>>

This is the complete archive with almost all scorers ever, collected by Gwidon S. Naskrent (special thanks to Jose Alberto Salas (Spanish clubs), Alan Brown (Scotish), Erik Frankhuizen and Miguel Revilla (virtual matches)). You can browse this archive manually or use search engine which is integrated with it.

All EC1 (Champions' Cup and Champions' League) finals
All EC2 (Cup Winners' Cup) finals
All EC3 (Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and UEFA Cup) finals
Complete list of virtual, awarded and replayed matches
All clubs contesting Euro Cups with original names (link to Santiago Velasco)

European Cups Archive contains the complete results of all the main European club competitions (including Super Cup finals, but without scorers) since the inception of the Champions' Cup in 1955 to the current season, aranged by season.

Archive by clubs (with details): FC Bayern Munchen

The Beginning of Champions Cup

The present tournament called Champions League, originally kwown as Champions Cup, started as an original idea of the French journalist Gabriel Hanot, editor of the sports magazine L'Équipe. He proposed the creation of a European competition to decide the best team in the Continent. The idea arose to challenge the claim of English papers that Wolverhampton Wanderers FC was the best team in the world, following their 3-2 victory against Budapesti Honvéd SE at Molineux Stadium on December 14, 1954 (Hungarian football was highly regarded in the 50s). This claim raised some controversy in European media, and Hanot was the first to answer: "We better wait until the Wolves travel to Moscow and Budapest to proclaim their invincibility; but if the English are so sure about their hegemony in football, this is the time to create a European tournament."

On December 16, 1954, Hanot and his colleague Jacques Ryswick exposed a first draft of their project:

• There will be 14-16 participants, playing a round robin.
• The games will be played in midweek and they will start at night (something unusual in the 50s) to allow for the working class to watch them.
• The games will be sponsored by the television of the participant club's country or the most important sports paper.

Most of the clubs consulted by L'Équipe proposed a competition format based on knock-out rounds instead of a league, to reduce the number of games. The French magazine made a tentative list of participants and send invitations to their national federations seeking approval. The following 18 clubs were included in this list (L'Équipe had in mind 16 final participants, but expected some withdrawals): SC Rot-Weiß Essen (FRG), Chelsea FC (England), SK Rapid (Austria), RSC Anderlechtois (Belgium), KB [Copenhagen] (Denmark), Hibernian FC (Scotland), Real Madrid CF (Spain), Stade de Reims (France), Flamengo Holland Sport (Netherlands), Budapesti Honvéd SE (Hungary), AC Milan (Italy), Sporting CP (Portugal), 1. FC Saarbrücken (Saarland), Malmö FF (Sweden), Servette FC (Switzerland), TJ Spartak Sokolovo Praha (Czechoslovakia), FK Dynamo [Moscow] (USSR), FK Partizan (Yugoslavia). Surprisingly, more than half of these teams were not even the current champions in their domestic leagues. L'Équipe established an open calendar for the different rounds and proposed that the final would be played in Paris somewhen between May 1 and June 30.

On March 2, 1955, UEFA celebrated a Constituent Congress in Vienna, and some representatives of L'Équipe took adventage of this to propose their project to the highest European football organization. They stated their idea of a continental tournament, the steps they had taken so far to that effect, and their null intention of monopolizing its organization or commercially exploting it. Some UEFA members like Delauny, Sebes, Schwartz, or Graham didn't show much interest about this project, but Crahay encourage the French journalists to go on with it and elaborate a final report.

In the meantime, the federations of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia held a meeting on March 4 to revive an old Central Europe competition, Mitropa Cup, which had been going on between 1927 and 1939. L'Équipe reacted quickly to this: on April 2, 1955, the French magazine gathered the presidents of the most important European clubs at the Ambassador Hotel in Paris to seek approval for the new continental tournament (two more delegations, USSR and Czechoslovakia, were represented by the Hungarian UEFA member Sebes).

This meeting was a complete success: frictions were left aside by all members and there were no allusions either to political affairs. One of the most difficult subjects was the financial one. From the revenues of each game, it should be deducted local taxes, the rent of stadiums (in some countries they belonged to the city government or some organism other than the clubs), organization and referee expenses, as well as a 1,000 $ allowance for the visiting team. According to the French proposal, the total income of each game would be divided as follows: 1) 5% for the local team's Federation; 2) 60% for the local team; 3) 30% as a common fund to share among all participants depending on the number of games played; 4) 5% for organization expenses. Finally, a proposal by Santiago Bernabéu (the president of Real Madrid CF) was approved, whereby the income of every match would be distributed 50-50 between the two contestants. This idea pleased most of his colleagues, because Real Madrid owned one of the largest stadiums in Europe and this meant that Bernabéu explicitly renounced a bigger slice of the pecuniary cake for the sake of the global competition.

During these seminal sessions, an Executive Committee was appointed to supervise the competition with the following members:
President: Ernest Bedrignans (France).
First Vice-President: Santiago Bernabéu (Spain).
Second Vice-President: Gusztav Sebes (Hungary).
Representatives: Buttersby (England), Keller (Saar), Jansen (FRG), Piazzalunga (Switzerland).

To close this marathon working sessions in Paris, the participants clubs where drafted. From the group of 18 invited teams, Budapesti Honvéd SE (Hungary), Flamengo Holland Sport (Netherlands), Malmö FF (Sweden), and KB (Denmark) were replaced by Budapesti Vörös Lobogó, PSV [Eindhoven], Djugårdens IF, and AGF [Århus], respectively. The Russian and the Czechoslovakian participants, FK Dynamo [Moscow] and TJ Spartak Sokolovo Praha, refused to join the competition and remained as substitutions in case of a future withdrawal. The English team Chelsea FC withdrew from the tournament after the draft alleging incompatibilities with the English League calendar, and was replaced by WKS Gwardia, from Poland.

UEFA initially refused to organize Champions Cup, and preferred to support a different competition suggested by the municipalities of those cities which held trade fairs yearly. It was a risk-proof proposal, since the local governments undertook all the organization expenses. On April 10, 1955, a meeting was held in Basel (Switzerland) among representatives of UEFA and city halls whereby a new European competition was created, namely Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (Messestädte Cup), with participant teams from cities such as Barcelona, Basel, Birmingham, Brussels, Budapest, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Leipzig, London, Milano, Moscow, Paris, Vienna, and Zagreb.

Things were getting serious in Europe and FIFA decided to come in and try to find a solution. On May 7, the Directive Committee of the highest football association held an emergency meeting in London to discuss the ongoing situation in European football. In these talks, it was officially approved the inception of three different club tournaments in the Continent: L'Équipe's competition, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, and Mitropa Cup. Regarding the former, FIFA stipulated the following requirements: 1) participant clubs should be approved by their respective federations; 2) the competition would be organized and supervised by UEFA; 3) the original name of European Cup would be reserved for a possible (and future) tournament among national squads, and therefore L'Équipe's competition should be called European Champion Clubs' Cup.

On May 17, 1955, the newly created Executive Committee of Champion Clubs' Cup held its first working session at the Hotel Castellana Hilton in Madrid. Its members accepted the directives proposed by FIFA, and later invited the president of UEFA, the Danish Ebbe Schwartz, to join them. The participating teams and the competition dates were definitely established. On May 21, another meeting was held in Paris between UEFA representatives and the Executive Committee. UEFA committed itself to organize the newborn competition and respect all the decissions already approved. A new Executive Committee was appointed, with Mr. Schwartz as President, Mr. Sebes as Vice-President, Mr. Delauny as Secretary, and Mr. Graham and Mr. Bauwens as Representatives.

Finally, everything was ready for the launch of European Champion Clubs' Cup on September 4, 1955, with the first game in Lisbon between Sporting CP, from Portugal, and FK Partizan, from Yugoslavia. This meant the starting gun for the most prestigious club competition in the world. The rest is already history.

story by Santiago Velasco ©

Short review of European Cups - first and last winners

First European football (soccer) Cup, Champions' Cup was found in 1955. 16 teams contested and Real Madrid CF was the first winner.
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup was found next year. Competition lasted two years (!) from group till final and FC Barcelona was the first winner.
Fiorentina was the first winner of Cup Winners' Cup in season 1960/61.
After the 1970/71 season the organisation of the Fairs Cup was taken over by UEFA. The competition was renamed into the UEFA Cup. To decide who would get to keep the old Fairs Cup trophy permanently, Fairs Cup Trophy Play-off was played between the first Fairs Cup winner ever and the last winner, Leeds United. FC Barcelona won.
Season 1971/72 was first for UEFA Cup (Tottenham Hotspur) and for Super Cup (Ajax).
FK Crvena zvezda (Red Star Belgrade) was the last winner of old Champions' Cup in season 1990/91. Since than, all Champions' Cups have league round and since 1997/98 not only champions from most powerfull domestic competitions are able to qualify for it.
SS Lazio was the last winner of Cup Winners' Cup in season 1998/99. Since than domestic Cup winners compete in UEFA Cup.