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The History Of The Champions League

The tournament was inaugurated in 1955, at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L'Équipe Gabriel Hanot,[2] as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, abbreviated to European Cup.

The competition began in 1955/56 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. This qualification system continued until 1992. In the 1992–93 season, the tournament was renamed to UEFA Champions League and eligibility was expanded to include not just domestic champions but also the best performing runners up according to UEFA's coefficient ranking list[3]. In UEFA's coefficient system, a team finishing second in the Spanish La Liga would be more deserving of an automatic place in the Champions League than a team finishing first in, for example, Polish Orange Ekstraklasa. As a result, the system was restructured to force "weaker" national champions to qualify for the group stages, while other, "stronger" national runners-up would automatically get places.

The competition system has been undergoing changes since the 1991/92 season (see history). The current system was adopted in 2003.

Between 1960 and 2004 the winner of the tournament qualified for the now defunct Intercontinental Cup (against the winner of the Copa Libertadores of South America). Since then, with FIFA taking over, the winner automatically quaifies for the FIFA Club World Cup with other winners of continental club championships.

By: Dee

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