Football

History of the UEFA Europa League

The UEFA Europa League, previously known as the UEFA Cup, is a football tournament organized every year by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). This soccer competition is meant for football clubs across Europe and is second only to the UEFA Champions League in terms of importance. The UEFA Europa League is the new name given to the UEFA Cup which was introduced in 1971. As a matter of fact, The UEFA Cup itself evolved from a lesser-known soccer tournament called the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which was first held in April 1955. The Inter-Cities Fair Cup was developed by Switzerland’s Ernst Thommen from Switzerland, Ottorino Barrasi from Italy and Sir Stanley Rous from England. The Inter-Cities Fair Cup soccer tournament was held over a period of three years among the football teams from European cities that organized trade fairs regularly.

The three-year duration for each tournament was planned to coincide with the trade fairs. The first edition saw soccer teams from Barcelona, Basle, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Leipzig, London, Milan and Zagreb compete against each other, and Barcelona emerged victorious against a London-based team. The second edition of this soccer tournament saw the participation of sixteen football clubs belonging to cities that organized fairs. From the third edition onwards, the three-year format was scraped and an annual format was introduced instead. In 1971, the Inter-Cities Fair Cup was renamed as the UEFA Cup to indicate that this competition came under the purview of UEFA. During the 1999-2000 season, the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup was merged with the UEFA Cup.

Previous UEFA Europa League season(s)

The first edition of the UEFA Europa League was won by Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. During this decade, soccer clubs from Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Netherlands began participating with England and found success in consecutive editions of the tournament, thus proving to be a dominant force. However, halfway through 1980s, Real Madrid CF made its presence felt by winning the Europa trophy twice. Following this, Italian soccer clubs became a force to be reckoned with in the 1990s. These Italian soccer clubs shared eight of the eleven UEFA Cup victories among them, with FC Internazionale Milano leading the pack by winning three times. In the final match of the 2009 season, on May 20, Shakhtar Donetsk football club went heads-to-head against Werder Bremen and against all odds won the tournament. If recent records are anything to go by, then it will be difficult to bet on any particular team for the 2009-2010 season of the UEFA Europa League that started on July 2, 2009.