Buzzin Football

The history of the Champions League is littered with many a tale of exemplary success and abysmal tragedy but its inception occurred, and was built, on friendly terms.

The competition itself was designed to fill a void created by players, fans and clubs that considered who was the most successful team in Europe.

Ultimately the foundation for the way the tournament would operate was the brainchild of the editor of a French sports magazine, Gabriel Hanot and his close peer Jacques Ferran, who outlined that the matches would take place on Wednesday nights and would involve not necessarily the most successful teams in their respective country, but the clubs that held the most appeal and drew the largest fan base.

This decision was not carried through to the eventual occurrence of the tournament in 1955 and the qualifying characteristic of the team was to be that they were champions of the league in their European nation.

This system eventually evolved to include prior qualifying rounds where home league champions and runners up could take place. The number of clubs allowed to enter the competition from a single nation was dependant on UEFA’s ranking of the team, as they took over the hosting of the tournament in 1992, and thus it was renamed UEFA Champions League.

Currently the UEFA nation ranks hold Spain, Italy, England and Germany within the top 4. Therefore, teams from these nations occupy a large proportion of the clubs actually taking part in the competition.

The involvement of UEFA, in 1992, and the changes they instigated caused the roster of teams to take part in the competition to increase from 8 to a total of 32 European clubs and the involvement of differing nations and clubs themselves.

Since 1955, the Spanish club Real Madrid have dominated the Champions League and won the tournament on 9 occasions; following a close second is Italian team Milan with 7 wins and trailing not far behind with a total of 5 wins are the English Liverpool side.

The Champions League, through the inclusion of so many nations in Europe, manages to attract a huge amount of revenue, particularly from media streams such as advertising, sports betting and sponsorship but the competition has endured several restrictions to this depending on the particular laws of the hosting nation.

The popularity of it is ever increasing and although the annual score sheet is dominated by a small pool of teams, the Champions League always reveals a great many surprises.