The European Football Champions Cup turns 70

Exactly 70 years ago in Paris, representatives of eight countries agreed to establish the European Champions Cup for football teams. The initiator was the authoritative French sports publication L'Équipe, and the reason was the country that pioneered football, England, where in the mid-50s they began to claim that English football clubs were the strongest in Europe.

The initiative was successful, since the claim of the arrogant pioneers was completely refuted by the fact that the first and then five-time consecutive winner of the Cup was Real Madrid, which, by the way, defeated the English Manchester United in the semi-finals of the second Cup. (In the first draw, the proud English refused to participate, saying that it distracted them from the domestic championship - but in the second draw they could not stand it).

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The first team to knock Real off its podium was the Portuguese Benfica in 1960, which won the following year. At that time, the team included the legendary Eusebio, whom Ukrainian football fans were able to see on TV as part of the Portuguese national team during the television coverage of the 1966 FIFA World Cup. However, if we talk about the lineups, then at that time in Real he was still the strongest, at least in Europe.

Let us recall that a year after the 1966 World Cup, Dynamo Kyiv won the Scottish Celtic, the then Cup holder, in the first round after two matches (what was going on among the fans in Kyiv during the second match is a topic for another conversation), but then lost to the very average Polish team Gornik. Dynamo became the winners of the Cup Winners' Cup almost twenty years later, but none of the Ukrainian teams ever got the European Champions Cup.

Over time, the European Champions Cup became the UEFA Champions League, the number of participating teams steadily increased, at the initial stage, instead of purely cup selection, round-robin tournaments appeared, etc. It is clear that this brought in ever-increasing profits, but the purely sporting effect of the first years diminished. However, this is the fate of any sport today.

Photo: Wikipedia