ROUND · every league

RUND CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

---

History

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE · FOUNDED 1955

A French sports paper invented the European Cup in 1955 to settle bar arguments about the continent's best team. Real Madrid won the first five, the format changed a dozen times, and since 2024/25 the group stage is one thirty-six-team league table — but the trophy is still the same argument, settled once a year.

The moments

1. 1956

   The first final

   Real Madrid came from behind twice to beat Stade de Reims 4–3 in Paris in the first European Cup final — and then won the next four as well. The competition has never had a first act to match it.

2. 1960

   Seven–three at Hampden

   Real Madrid 7, Eintracht Frankfurt 3, in front of 127,000 in Glasgow: Puskás scored four, Di Stéfano three, and the match is still shown to youth teams as the point of the sport. It completed five straight titles for Madrid.

3. 1967

   The Lisbon Lions

   Celtic beat Internazionale 2–1 in Lisbon with eleven players born within thirty miles of Glasgow, the first British club to win the Cup — and the last team of local boys to do anything like it.

4. 1977

   England's six in a row begins

   Liverpool won in Rome, and English clubs took six consecutive European Cups — Liverpool three, Nottingham Forest two, Aston Villa one. Forest remain the only club with more European Cups than domestic titles.

5. 1985

   Heysel

   Thirty-nine supporters died before the Liverpool–Juventus final in Brussels, and English clubs were banned from Europe for five years. The disaster forced the rebuilding of how the game stages its biggest nights.

6. 1992

   The Champions League

   The knockout cup became a league-plus-knockout with group stages, television money and an anthem. The old name went; the trophy and the argument stayed.

7. 1999

   Ninety seconds in Barcelona

   Manchester United trailed Bayern Munich 1–0 into injury time and won 2–1 on goals from Sheringham and Solskjær, ninety seconds apart, to complete the first English treble.

8. 2005

   Istanbul

   Milan led Liverpool 3–0 at half-time. Liverpool were level six minutes into the second half and won on penalties — the final every comeback since has been measured against.

9. 2018

   Three in a row again

   Real Madrid beat Liverpool in Kyiv for a third consecutive title — the first three-peat of the Champions League era — on their way to a fifteenth European Cup by 2024, twice as many as anyone else.

10. 2024

    Thirty-six teams, one table

    The group stage was replaced by a single league of thirty-six clubs, each playing eight different opponents: top eight straight to the Round of 16, ninth to twenty-fourth into a play-off, the rest out.

Records that stand

Roll of honour

Counts include the European Cup years — it is the same trophy, whatever the branding of the season.