INTRODUCTION

Since the competition was founded as the European Champions Clubs’ Cup over half a century
ago, only 22 clubs and 515 players have won it. But, in doing so, they and their opponents have
left us an incredibly rich heritage of magic moments. You might not be old enough to remember
Alfredo Di Stéfano’s Real Madrid, Eusébio’s Benfica, Johan Cruyff’s Ajax or Franz
Beckenbauer’s Bayern back in the days when clubs established dynasties by successfully
defending the European crown – something no team has yet managed to do since the competition
became the UEFA Champions League in 1992. And exactly what is it that sticks in your mind?
Is it a microsecond of breathtaking skill like Zinédine Zidane’s sublime volley in the 2002 final?
Do you focus on a wider time-span, such as Manchester United’s three-minute comeback in
Barcelona in 1999? Maybe it is not an image at all, but the sheer drama of a penalty shoot-out. Or
perhaps it is an emotion rather than an image. The Museum of Champions offers you memorabilia
and images to inspire memories and help you to re-live the special emotions created by the world’s
top club competition.

The Founder

It may be a statement of the obvious that founder of the ‘European Cup’ was a man of vision. In
latter years, ‘visionaries’ have tended to wear bureaucratic or marketing hats. Not Gabriel Hanot.
He was a football man through and through. Born in the northern French city of Arras on 6
November 1889, he played as fullback or winger for US Tourquennoise and AS Française,
winning his first cap at 19. However, after scoring twice during his twelfth international (a 2-2
draw in Belgium) his career was truncated by an accident in the plane he was piloting. After
World War II, he partook of a unique footballing cocktail as journalist and national team coach
until, after a 5-1 home defeat by Spain in 1949, he penned an unsigned article in L’Equipe
demanding his own dismissal as coach. The coach, following the recommendation of the
journalist, resigned. He was 65 and still football editor of L’Equipe when he launched his project
for a ‘European Cup’. Turning the vision into reality required a team-effort and Hanot was ably
backed by the newspaper’s editor and publisher Jacques Goddet, aged 50 at the time; by Jacques
de Ryswick, a loquacious written-press and radio reporter also aged 50; and by Jacques Ferran, a
34-year-old reporter who was about to start a 30-year stint as football editor at L’Equipe and
France Football. Fittingly, L’Equipe’s special correspondent in Lisbon for the first-ever European
Cup game between Sporting Clube and FK Partizan was Gabriel Hanot, on the spot to watch and
record the birth of his baby.

The first 16 1955-1956

THE 16 PIONEERS

With England’s Football League barring Chelsea FC from competing, Edinburghbased Hibernian
FC were the sole British representatives on a starting grid featuring several names unfamiliar to
today’s young fans – among them MTK Budapest, who raised the Hungarian flag under the name
of Vörös Lobogó, or 1. FC Saarbrücken who, months earlier, had provided ten members of the
Saar national team that had played FIFA World Cup qualifiers. Only three of the sixteen pioneers
– Real Madrid CF, AC Milan and PSV Eindhoven – have ever lifted the trophy. The first round
of the European Cup produced 71 goals and only five home wins, with another 37 goals coming
in the quarter-finals where Real Madrid CF, having beaten FK Partizan 4-0 on Christmas Day,
hung on for a 3-0 defeat in ice-bound Belgrade five weeks later. They then beat Gunnar Nordahl’s
AC Milan to earn a trip to Paris to take on Stade de Reims, who were unbeaten en route to the

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final. Thanks to Alfredo Di Stéfano, Héctor Rial (2) and Marquitos, Real Madrid came from 2-0
and 3-2 down to win 4-3 and become first champions of Europe.

THE eight FOUNDING MEMBERS

The presence of eight participants explains the eight-pointed Starball which has become one of
the competition’s trademarks – and the eight names in the first-ever UEFA Champions League
created worried frowns in the marketing department. The champions of England, Germany and
Spain had been eliminated in the two preliminary rounds. What’s more, with the group phase
kickingoff in late November, PFC CSKA Moskva, the executioners of defending champions FC
Barcelona, were obliged to play their ‘home’ games in Germany, where they drew once and lost
twice. But their group went to the wire, with Olympique de Marseille, Rangers FC and Club
Brugge KV fighting for the top spot which gave direct access to the final. The other group was
dominated by Fabio Capello’s AC Milan, who won all six games, conceding only one goal.
Fatally, they conceded one more in the Munich final – the Basile Boli header which made
Raymond Goethals’ Olympique de Marseille the first champions of a competition that set new
benchmarks in European club football.

1956 - 2013

ULTIMATE FOOTBALL ARENAS

A great game needs a great setting. And Europe’s finest teams and best footballers have competed
for club football’s greatest prize in the continent’s most memorable stadiums. These temples of
football have often become synonymous with the European Champion Clubs’ Cup and UEFA
Champions League finals they have staged. It is impossible to think of Hampden Park without
picturing the glory of the 1960 final, the most free-scoring in the tournament’s history, or the
grandeur of Zinédine Zidane’s volley as Real Madrid CF won the competition for the ninth time
in 2002. The mere mention of Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium conjures up memories of a
blockbuster more thrilling than anything Hollywood has produced, when AC Milan met Liverpool
FC. 15 countries and 23 cities have hosted finals since the competition started in 1956, ensuring
that a staggering 3,779,169 supporters across Europe have had the chance to watch the game’s
legends in the flesh.

BEST CLUBS

BADGE OF HONOUR Five great European football clubs – AFC Ajax, FC Bayern München,
Liverpool FC, AC Milan, Real Madrid CF – are an elite within the elite. They have won the
European Cup 33 times between them and, having won either five times or more – or three years
in a row – have been awarded the Badge of Honour. This iconic badge is a simple device –
showing a white outline of the trophy on a silver oval – players at these clubs can wear on their
left sleeve to show that their club has achieved this remarkable distinction. In 1966, UEFA
decided that Real Madrid CF, having won the trophy for a sixth time, had earned the right to keep
it. A new trophy was commissioned but AFC Ajax (winners from 1971 to 1973), FC Bayern
München (winners from 1974 to 1976), Liverpool FC (who won their fifth European crown in
2005) and AC Milan (who have won the competition seven times) have all earned the right to
keep the trophy. At the start of the 2000/01 season, a new Badge of Honour was created to
commemorate such historic achievements. This badge has now become one of the greatest
accolades in European football, a mark that all great clubs aspire to.

REAL MADRID (LOS MERENGUES)

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Real Madrid CF have won more games and scored more goals than any other club in the
competition. Real Madrid CF have won more games and scored more goals than any other club
in the competition.

LIVERPOOL FC (THE RED) Liverpool FC have never lost a penalty shoot-out in Europe:
defeating AS Roma in 1984, AC Milan in 2005 and Chelsea FC in 2007.

DE GODENZONEN (AFC AJAX)

In 1995, the year that they won the UEFA Champions League, the Dutch national team was almost
entirely composed of AFC Ajax players.

FC BAYERN MÜNCHEN (Der FCB)

FC Bayern München are the only club to have won a domestic championship, domestic cup,
European Champion Clubs’ Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, UEFA
Cup, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup.

MILAN AC (I Rossoneri AC)

Milan have reached six UEFA Champions League finals and won three of them. No other team
has made the final as often since the change of format in 1992/93.

BEST PLAYERS

Gento Francisco

Paco Francisco ‘Paco’ Gento’s record of six winners’ medals in the European Champion Clubs’
Cup still remains unbeaten today. He completed his half-dozen against FK Partizan in 1966,
having played in eight of the first eleven finals. When he played the first, in 1956, the flying
leftfooter from Santander was 22 a good six years younger than his illustrious attacking partners
Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás.

Di Stéfano LA SAETA RUBIA

Alfredo Di Stéfano was never one to transmit or receive flowery speeches. The man who emerged
as the dominant figure in the early years of continental football was a prototype of the player who
preferred to do his talking on the pitch. Di Stéfano’s eloquence as a footballer was pure poetry to
those who saw him wearing the famous all-white strip of Real Madrid. He was the classic example
of a player who cannot be judged by what he said but can best be judged by what others said about
him.

Puskás The Galloping Major

Only the happiest of accidents allowed the name of Ferenc Puskás to be deeply engraved in the
history of European club football. Olympic champion in 1952 and silver-medallist at the 1954
FIFA World Cup, he had hammered in 83 goals in 84 games for Hungary.

Eusébio A PANTERA NEGRA

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira was among the first African players to make a huge impact in European
football. Although Portuguese in his footballing denomination, he has never forgotten his roots
in Mozambique and expresses enormous gratitude to Mário Coluna, the compatriot who did so
much to help him integrate into Portuguese football when he travelled, on 16 December 1960,

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from Lorenço Marques to a wintry Lisbon. And it was there, at the Estádio da Luz, that Eusébio
earned himself the ‘Pantera Negra’ Black Panther nickname.

Best the Fifth Beatle

It was against SL Benfica that George Best revealed the full range of his skill and tricks.
Manchester United FC went into the European Champion Clubs’ Cup quarter-final tie in Lisbon
in 1966 leading by a solitary goal after the 3-2 first-leg win at Old Trafford. United manager Matt
Busby planned a cautious approach, at least for the opening 20 minutes, but later famously
commented: “George must have listened to my talk with cotton wool in his ears.

Casillas San Iker

With trophies ranging from the European Under-16 title to a FIFA World Cup winner’s medal
and two UEFA European Championships, Real Madrid CF’s No.1 is in the select band of players
who have won every major competition with club and national team. Casillas has played more
UEFA Champions League games than any other goalkeeper, picking up winner’s medals in 2000
and 2002.

Ronaldinho Ronaldinho gaÚcho

If he’s wearing the FC Barcelona shirt, it takes a special player to earn a standing ovation from
the Real Madrid CF fans at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. Ronaldinho has been special enough
to do just that. France Football Ballon d’Or, FIFA World Player, and UEFA Club Footballer of
the Year in 2006, his collection of individual awards is not only a mark of exceptional quality but
also an ode to the joy of football.

Cristiano Ronaldo Abelhinha

Vicious, swerving free-kicks, tap-ins after highspeed runs behind defenders, bullet headers, power
drives from improbable distances… Cristiano Ronaldo finds all sorts of routes to the net. The
Portuguese striker’s immense repertoire has made him one of the world’s greatest and prompted
Real Madrid CF to pay Manchester United FC a world record fee for him in the summer of 2009.

Leonel Messi La Pulga

Once in a generation, an extra-special player comes along. Lionel Messi seems to have stepped
out of a computer game and on to the pitch. His skills have the fans rubbing their eyes and asking
“how did he do that?” And FC Barcelona’s modest pocket-sized genius is not just a scoring
machine. He clocks up as many assists as he does goals. Even Argentina’s other left-footed
legend, Diego Maradona, is in awe: “He feels the ball, that’s what makes him different from the
rest. I have found my heir