Champions League - Early Tournaments

Early tournaments

Club competitions between teams from different European countries can trace their origins back as far as 1897, when the Challenge Cup was founded as a competition between clubs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that under normal circumstances would not meet in competition. This competition ran until 1911, with its last winners, Wiener Sportclub, retaining the trophy. The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was played for in 1909 and 1911 in Turin in 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 the Austro-Hungarian Empire following 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 FC 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 Újpest FC. Despite the great success, the tournament was never organized 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 Copa Latina, 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.

A combined list of winners of these early tournaments and the European Cup can be found here.

The first sparks

The Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones, or South American Championship of Champions Clubs, kicked off in 1948 after years of deliberation and organization and set into motion the antecedent of the Copa Libertadores. French journalist Jacques Ferran was in Santiago, Chile, covering the Championship for the newspaper L'Equipe. Vasco da Gama would go on to win the tournament. Back in France and fascinated with the idea of a continental club champions league, Ferran took the idea to his newspaper firm and Gabriel Hanot, the editor of L'Equipe, immediately begin forming proposals to present to UEFA (who at the time practiced only European national team championships).

The summer of 1953 saw Wolverhampton Wanderers play a friendly game 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 USSR, among others, before meeting Honved of Hungary in a game televised live on the BBC. The Honved team included many of the "Magical Magyars" team (regarded as one of the best in the world). Wolves won the game 3–2 which led their manager Stan Cullis and the British press to proclaim them as "Champions of the World", in spite of Honved's defeat to Red Star Belgrade (then lying seventh in their domestic league) days earlier. This was the final spur for Hanot who had long campaigned for a European-wide club tournament to determine who was the best of the continent.

“ Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible, let them go to Moscow and Budapest. And there are other internationally renowned clubs: A.C. Milan and Real Madrid to name but two. A club world championship, or at least a European one — larger, more meaningful and more prestigious than the Mitropa Cup and more original than a competition for national teams — should be launched. ”

Gabriel Hanot

The UEFA congress of March 1955 saw the proposal raised, with approval given in April of that year, and the kick-off of the first European Cup the following season