How The UEFA Champions League Started
The UEFA Champions League of Soccer is one of the oldest sports bettingtournaments in the world. Begun in the middle of the 1950s, the Champions League takes the best league teams in Europe and puts them into a tournament format similar to the World Cup. The Champions League tournament is aimed to crown the top football club in the world, similar to how the bookie software World Cup is used to crown the top soccer nation. Today we’ll look back at the roots of the UEFA Champions League.
Originally known as the European Cup, the UEFA Champions League started out in 1955 – 56 season in which 16 of the top league clubs across Europe were invited to compete for the award. The countries sending clubs were Italy, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Scotland, Yugoslavia, Spain, West Germany, Saar, Switzerland, Portugal, France and Hungary. The first known match of the tournament took place in September of 1955 featuring Sporting CP of Portugal taking on Partizan of Yugoslavia. The two sides ended the game in a three to three tie. Eventually, Spanish club Real Madrid ended up winning the tournament, which finished in May.
Annually, the tournament runs from September to May, with 16 teams broken into four groups of four with the NFL winner and second place of each division moving on to continue in the tournament. After the first round, the remaining teams face one another in a home and home knockout tournament. The winning team is actually the team with the most goals not necessarily the one that wins the game. For instance, if one team wins five to nothing and then loses the next leg one to nothing, they still advance, because they won the series five goals to one.
