The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is the governing body for association football in Europe. It organises four club competitions: the UEFA Champions League (formerly European Cup), the UEFA Europa League (formerly UEFA Cup), the UEFA Europa Conference League, and the UEFA Super Cup. UEFA was also responsible for the Cup Winners' Cup and the Intertoto Cup until their discontinuation in 1999 and 2008, respectively. Together with the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL), it also organised the Intercontinental Cup, which was last held in 2004, before its replacement by FIFA's Club World Cup.
Spanish side Real Madrid have won a record total of 24 titles in UEFA competitions, seven more than AC Milan (Italy). Before the establishment of the Europa Conference League in 2021–22, the only team to have won every UEFA club competition was Juventus (Italy). [1] They received The UEFA Plaque on 12 July 1988, in recognition of winning the then three seasonal confederation trophies – the UEFA Cup in 1977, the Cup Winners' Cup in 1984, and the European Cup in 1985, the first club to do so. [2] Juventus additionally won their first Super Cup in 1984, their first Intercontinental Cup in 1985, and the Intertoto Cup in 1999. [3]
Spanish clubs have won the most titles (65), ahead of clubs from Italy (50) and England (48). Italy is the only country in European football history whose clubs won the three main competitions in the same season: in 1989–90, Milan retained the European Cup, Sampdoria won the Cup Winners' Cup, and Juventus secured the UEFA Cup. [4]
While the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup is considered to be the predecessor of the UEFA Cup, it is not officially recognised by UEFA and therefore successes in this competition are not included in this list. [5] Also excluded are the unofficial 1972 European Super Cup and the Club World Cup, a FIFA competition. [6]
Real Madrid holds the record for the most titles overall with 24, followed by Milan's 17 titles. [7] [8] Spanish teams hold the record for the most wins in each of the three main UEFA club competitions: Real Madrid, with 14 European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles; Sevilla, with 7 UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League titles; and Barcelona, with 4 Cup Winners' Cup titles. Milan share the most Super Cup wins (5) with Barcelona and Real Madrid, and the most Intercontinental Cup wins (3) with Real Madrid. German clubs Hamburger SV, Schalke 04 and VfB Stuttgart, and Spanish club Villarreal are the record holders in the UEFA Intertoto Cup (two titles each).
Before the Europa Conference League was established in 2021–22, Juventus, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, and Manchester United were the only teams to win all of UEFA's three main club competitions (European Cup/UEFA Champions League, Cup Winners' Cup, UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League). Juventus additionally won the Super Cup, the Intertoto Cup and the Intercontinental Cup, making it the only team to win six different UEFA competitions. [9]
The following table lists all the clubs that have won at least one UEFA club competition, and is updated as of the 2024 UEFA Europa League final played on 22 May 2024.
UCL | European Cup / UEFA Champions League |
UEL | UEFA Cup / UEFA Europa League |
UECL | UEFA Europa Conference League |
CWC | UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (defunct) |
USC | UEFA Super Cup |
UIC | UEFA Intertoto Cup (defunct) |
IC | Intercontinental Cup (defunct) |
Spanish clubs are the most successful in UEFA competitions, with a total of 65 titles, and hold a record number of wins in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League (19), UEFA Super Cup (16), and UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League (14). [10] Italian clubs are second with 50 titles and have the most victories in the Intercontinental Cup (7). In third place, English clubs have secured 48 titles, including a record 8 wins in the Cup Winners' Cup. French clubs, ranked sixth on the list, have won the Intertoto Cup the most times (12). Italian clubs have a distinction of being the only ones who have won the three main UEFA competitions in the same season (1989–90). [4]
The following table lists all the countries whose clubs have won at least one UEFA competition, and is updated as of the 2024 UEFA Europa League final played on 22 May 2024.
UCL | European Cup / UEFA Champions League |
UEL | UEFA Cup / UEFA Europa League |
UECL | UEFA Europa Conference League |
CWC | UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (defunct) |
USC | UEFA Super Cup |
UIC | UEFA Intertoto Cup (defunct) |
IC | Intercontinental Cup (defunct) |
Nationality | UCL | UEL | UECL | CWC | USC | UIC | IC | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Spain | 19 | 14 | 0 | 7 | 16 | 5 | 4 | 65 |
Italy | 12 | 10 | 1 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 7 | 50 |
England | 15 | 9 | 1 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 48 |
Germany [lower-alpha 2] | 8 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 32 |
Netherlands | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 16 |
France | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 14 |
Portugal | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 11 |
Belgium | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
Scotland | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Soviet Union | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Russia | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
Romania | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Turkey | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Yugoslavia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
Sweden | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
East Germany | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Czechoslovakia | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Ukraine | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Denmark | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
The UEFA Super Cup is an annual super cup football match organised by UEFA and contested by the winners of the two main European club competitions: the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. The competition's official name was originally the Super Competition, and later the European Super Cup. It was renamed the UEFA Super Cup in 1995, following a policy of rebranding by UEFA.
The history of the European Cup and UEFA Champions League spans over sixty years of competition, finding winners and runners-up from all over the continent.
The 2002–03 UEFA Champions League was the 11th season of UEFA's premier European club football tournament, the UEFA Champions League, since its rebranding in 1992, and the 48th European Cup tournament overall. The competition was won by Milan, who beat Juventus on penalties in the European Cup's first ever all-Italian final, to win their sixth European title, and its first in nine years. Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy was again the top scorer, scoring 12 goals over the two group stages and knockout stage, in addition to two goals he had scored in the qualifying phase, although his side bowed out in the quarter-finals and missed out on the chance of playing in a final at their own stadium.
This page indexes the individual year in association football pages. Each year is annotated with one or more significant events as a reference point.
This page details statistics of the UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League. Unless notified these statistics concern all seasons since inception of the UEFA Cup in the 1971–72 season, including qualifying rounds. The UEFA Cup replaced the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in the 1971–72 season, so the Fairs Cup is not considered a UEFA competition, and hence clubs' records in the Fairs Cup are not considered part of their European record.
Football clubs from La Liga have won a record 70 continental and worldwide titles. Real Madrid, the most successful of them, have won the European Cup on 14 separate occasions and claimed 29 trophies in total. Barcelona have won twenty continental and worldwide titles, while Atlético Madrid have claimed eight. Sevilla have won eight and Valencia have won seven trophies to their name. Additionally, Deportivo La Coruña have been regulars in the UEFA Champions League, while Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol, Alavés, Zaragoza and Mallorca have all contested major finals in second-tier competitions and below. Smaller La Liga clubs, like Villarreal, Celta Vigo and Málaga have also found success in Europe, reaching the latter stages of the Champions League and winning the Europa League, as is the case with Villarreal.
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club first participated in a European competition in 1955. The first international cup they took part in was the Latin Cup in which they participated as champions of Spain. The competition lasted from 1949 to 1957 and Real Madrid won both tournaments which they entered, the same number as Barcelona and Milan. Since becoming the first Spanish club to enter the European Cup in 1955, Real has competed in every UEFA-organized competition, except the Intertoto Cup and Conference League. They have missed out on European football only twice in their history, in the 1977–78 and 1996–97 seasons.
Associazione Calcio Milan is an Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy. The club was founded in 1899 as Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, and has competed in the Italian football league system since 1900. They were the first Italian club to qualify for the European Cup in 1955. Since then, the club has competed in every UEFA-organised competition, with the exception of the Intertoto Cup and the Europa Conference League.
Futbol Club Barcelona is a Spanish professional football club based in Barcelona. The club first participated in a European competition in 1910, and from 1955 onwards spent every season in one or more European competitions. The first international cup they took part in was the Pyrenees Cup. The competition lasted from 1910 to 1914 and Barcelona won four out of five editions. From 1914 to the beginning of the Latin Cup in 1949, Barcelona did not participate in any international competitions. From the 1955–56 season onward, with the exception of 1956–57, they are the only team to have played in the European competitions every year to date.
Proposals for a European Super League in association football consist of recurring attempts by individual teams or consortiums of association football clubs to advocate for the creation of an additional tier of European football outside of the traditional footballing pyramids of each national football association.
Juventus Football Club first participated in a Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) competition in 1958. The first international cup in which the club took part since the advent of professionalism in Italy was the Central European Cup, an inter-association tournament where the Old Lady made its debut in 1929. That competition lasted from 1927 to 1940 and the club reached the semi-finals in five editions. From 1938 to the Torneio Internacional de Clubes Campeões in 1951, in which they gained the final, Juventus did not participate in any international championships. After the establishing of UEFA in 1954 and the creation of its first own club competitions since the following year, they have competed, as of 2022, in six out of the seven confederation tournaments. After its triumph in 1985 Intercontinental Cup, the club obtained its first world champion title and contemporaneously claimed the trophy at least once in each of then five international competitions, making the Turinese club the first and only one worldwide in reach that achievement, which was revalidated after winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup fourteen years later and remained in force until the first Europa Conference League final played in 2022.
The UEFA Plaque was a honorific award given by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to those clubs that had won, at least once, the title in each of the three major international competitions organised by that confederation, namely the European Champions Cup, the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup. It was officially established in late 1987 and its first award was given in the second half of the following year, with Italian Juventus being the club to be honoured. A second award was initially scheduled for the second half of 1992 in favour of Dutch side Ajax, but it was not conferred for unclarified reasons by the confederation after Spanish team Barcelona —who did not comply with the requirement imposed by UEFA— at the same time unsuccessfully applied to European football's governing body for such recognition, being subsequently discontinued.
Italian football clubs have entered European association football competitions since season 1955–56, when Milan took part in European Cup competition. Nowadays, Italian football is the fourth force in Europe according to UEFA ranking, following the English, Spanish and German leagues. Italian clubs have also entered several times worldwide inter-club competitions since the 1963 Intercontinental Cup.
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