Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 12 i World Soccer Presents

Your journey through the history of Europe’s elite club competition continues with this second edition, focusing on the Champions League era from the1992-93 campaign to the present day. If you haven’t read our European Cup era bookazine yet, ensure you grab a copy as it helps lay the foundations for what it is come in part two. Since UEFA’s re-branding of the competition in the early1990s, the Champions League has successfully evolved into what is today a monster spectacle, with an estimated 700 million global television viewers tuning in to the 2022 showpiece between Real Madrid and Liverpool. No other club competition comes close with even the NFL’s Super Bowl, widely regarded as the world’s most commercial sporting event, failing to register even half as many viewers in 2022. It’s…

They were the team that Louis van Gaal built and the Bosman ruling destroyed. With an average age of 24, the Ajax side that beat Milan in the 1995 Champions League final were the youngest to win the European Cup. Yet they were to fall apart as quickly as they had risen. Within two years of their triumph, the coach had left and the team’s brightest young players were being cherry-picked on free transfers. The starting line-up for the final featured six homegrown players and only two foreigners, something that would be unthinkable for a side reaching the tournament decider today. And in these days of billionaire investors, the achievement of Van Gaal’s Ajax is unlikely to be repeated. Not only had they been assembled for a song, but also…

The waiting is over. after 32 years, Real madrid are champions of europe again. The club, who over the years have done so much to make the champions cup such a unique event, claimed their seventh title in the competition with a victory over Juventus in the amsterdam arena that owed as much to the italians’ profligacy in front of goal as it did to Real’s eventual superiority. The scorer of the only goal, Yugoslav predrag mijatovic, did not dedicate his success to the fans, who had waited since Real’s defeat of partizan Belgrade in 1966 for their team to be crowned kings of europe again. “lots of people deserve to be mentioned: the fans, the players, the backroom staff,” he said. “But I dedicate the goal and the cup…

“I was an everton supporter growing up, so playing for liverpool was never the dream for me. But liverpool’s scouting department was more efficiently run when i was16 and, when the offer came in, they were the better team to join. I was given the job of cleaning John Barnes’ boots, and they had some great players there like Ronnie Whelan, steve nicol, John aldridge and alan hansen, so it was a great experience to be around these players. The history of the club was all around you at liverpool. it was more than just a football club, it was part of the fabric of the city and you felt that when you wore that shirt. You might ask why i left in1999, and the answer is simple. it wasn’t…

Close to the dressing-rooms in the Aufschalke arena is a small, stark chapel which is licensed for weddings. But on this occasion the arena was witness, instead, to divorce on the grand scale. In previous years the likes of Real madrid and milan, ajax and Bayern munich have stormed into the final with ambitions to maintain, extend or revive their dynastic command of the pinnacles of european club football; to reinvest the revenue in adding to their overstuffed squads of superstars. Not this time. porto and monaco turned up like poor country cousins gatecrashing the family celebration, and it was the portuguese who came away with the spoils in a 3-0 victory. The prospect for both clubs was not to buy and build but to sell off the family silver.…

To employ tabloid vernacular, it was the “subs wot won it”. Andres Iniesta brought drive and energy to Barcelona’s midfield, Henrik Larsson created both the Spanish champions’ goals, and Juliano Belletti thundered the winner. Thus Barcelona reaped deserved reward for their stylish season, while Arsenal, for once, came up teasingly short of luck. While Catalonia celebrated its heroes’ second crowning as kings of Europe – the first was in1992 – the Gunners went down bitterly and with perverse bad grace considering that they benefited quite as much as Barcelona from Norwegian referee Terje Hauge’s bad day at the office. They complained loudly that Samuel Eto’o’s equaliser should have been ruled out for offside and that they received no protection from Hauge against some over-zealous Barca tackling. But given their league…

Manchester United never do things the easy way. Their first European Cup was won in1968 with a team rebuilt by Matt Busby from the ruins of the 1958 Munich air disaster. The second was snatched against the odds in dramatic style in Barcelona in 1999. And now this, their third success, won on penalties in Moscow after an epic encounter between two English heavyweights ended1-1. It was1.34am in the Russian capital when United goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar pushed away Nicolas Anelka’s sudden-death penalty to secure the trophy. It was cruel on the substitute Chelsea forward, who admitted that he had refused to take one of the first five spot-kicks. It was cruel on Chelsea captain John Terry, who had stepped up to take Chelsea’s fifth penalty in the absence…

Time and again football manages, somehow, to astound even those who have been immersed in the game for all their professional lives. Chelsea’s victory in Munich was one such occasion. This was not a great game. No memorable football, as such. But it generated matchless drama and a series of twists and turns which demonstrated just why so many millions around the world are held spellbound by the game. Chelsea’s victory made for mesmerising “reality television” far beyond the scripted manipulations of any TV producer or director. The “Roman Empire” from west London appeared doomed to defeat time and time again. First, Thomas Muller headed Bayern in front in the 83rd minute, only for Didier Drogba to head a magnificent equaliser five minutes later. Then, in extra-time, they conceded a…

World Soccer was launched in October1960 on the back of the excitement generated by Real Madrid’s fifth Champions Cup triumph, over Eintracht Frankfurt at Glasgow’s Hampden Park. Amassing the first five cups took the Spanish club five years, collecting the second quintet took 54 years. That speaks volumes for the competitive, commercial and technical explosion generated by the initial chain reaction. As time goes on so the traditions embodied in football clubs become ever more significant. Countries change. The geopolitical face of Europe in the1950s featured the likes of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – all of which are now long gone. However, the cities and clubs remain and this latest Champions League final illustrated the historic connections. Real and Atletico had met once before, in the semi-finals back…

From Hector Rial’s two goals in 1956, Paco Gento’s extra-time winner in1958, and Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas’ demolition job of Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960; to Predrag Mijatovic’s piercing of Juventus in1998, Zinedine Zidane’s momentous volley in 2002 against Bayer Leverkusen and Sergio Ramos’ late, late leveller in Lisbon in 2014: Real Madrid’s greatest successes have always offered a platform for individual brilliance. And so it was that their record extending-11th victory in the European Cup/Champions League was secured with Cristiano Ronaldo’s decisive penalty. The experience for the losers, Atletico Madrid, could not have been more bitter, having lost in their two previous finals in a replay (to Bayern Munich in1974) and in extra-time (to Real in 2014). This latest failure, in a penalty shootout, was even closer, with…

Zinedine Zidane’s decision to step down after two-and-a-half years of remarkable success on his coaching debut with world and European champions Real Madrid was a surprise – but not that much of a surprise. After all, what was there left for a man who won everything as a player and then as a coach? Especially as the looming prospect was rebuilding a team replete with fading, battered egos and suffering all the unpleasant consequences of inconsistent results larded over with consequent bad temper and impatience among directors, fans and the media. Zidane had a taste of what is to come within minutes of the final whistle of the 3-1 victory over Liverpool in Kyiv, with Cristiano Ronaldo and two-goal hero Gareth Bale both talking about what the future might hold.…

The third all-English final of the Champions League revealed the English elite as the de facto Super League. While the ravages of COVID-19 exposed the financial fragility of Spanish, Italian and German football, so the billionaire status of Chelsea and Manchester City enabled them to maintain fatter squads than any of their skinny continental rivals. UEFA’s flagship club competition is a notoriously fickle lover. In the modern era, only Real Madrid have extended the romance for more than one year. An overall message from Porto, however, was that the Premier League can likely deliver winners again next season. This will not necessarily be Chelsea, deserved as their outplaying and out-thinking of Manchester City and Pep Guardiola was, in a duel whose energy resembled a sixth-round FA Cup tie. Both will…

Marseille brought the champions cup full circle as one presidential ego overtook another at the olympic stadium in munich. Bernard Tapie had not spent anywhere near the £35 million which silvio Berlusconi invested last summer in his own “Dream Team” concept at milan. But Tapie, controversial businessman, politician and champagne socialist, had thrown all his personal resources into achieving that ultimate soccer ambition of bringing to France its first european trophy of any shape or form. Tapie’s methods are all his own. marseille have always been steeped in controversy: even their greatest success was achieved in the shadow of match-fixing allegations concerning a game at Valenciennes. But who or what institution can bring to heel the man who embraced all the world – Berlusconi, Jean-pierre papin and then his own…

“It’s the result which counts. The rest is not important.” With that cryptic comment, Milan coach Fabio Capello left the Viennese stage to Louis van Gaal of Ajax in the wake of the holders’ failure in the Austrian capital. A much more serious failure than the one against Marseille two years ago. This time Milan did not have the consolation of the Italian league title and its insurance of an immediate return to Europe’s premier club competition. This time defeat condemned Milan to life in the UEFA Cup. Not a prospect to cheer president Silvio Berlusconi or provide him with a happy distraction from ever more complex affairs of state back home in Italy. Berlusconi, to be fair, did not rush off in a huff but leaned over the press…

Football drama drowned out the opera as Bayern Munich wore down Valencia over a Champions League final marathon in Milan’s San Siro. Goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, the Man of the Match, and midfield commander Stefan Effenberg took the Oscars on a night of drama in which the German champions righted what they felt had been the wrong of1999 - when they lost the final in astonishing circumstances to Manchester United. Bayern grew stronger as the match went on, having gone a goal behind in only the third minute and then seen schemer Mehmet Scholl miss a penalty shortly afterwards. But when Kahn saved the crucial last penalty kick from Mauricio Pellegrino he put all the event’s other VIPs in the shade. Watching up in the stands had been the likes of…

So then, football, Italian-style, is bad for you? In the season that witnessed the first ever all-Italian Champions Cup final, the question is worth asking. As someone who has lived in Italy for the past 18 years, I have always been struck by the passionate commitment of the “Italy-bashers club”. For example, I well recall how on the eve of the Italy v Netherlands Euro 2000 semi-final, colleagues tried to impress upon me how “bad for football” it would be if Italy were to beat the Dutch. It would be a triumph for boring old negative catenaccio at the expense of positive Dutch total football, I was assured. Italy’s subsequent dourly defensive performance doubtless only confirmed the worst suspicions of the Italy-bashers. Never mind that Italy had played some excellent…

Morning in Istanbul before the match and Liverpool fans are straggling along the river front, their glazed expressions either a product of a long night on the town or disbelief at being in the Champions League final at all. Next morning, the same fans, the same glazed expression, this time painted in sheer wonder of the events of the night before. The die is already cast for the legend: Liverpool’s fifth Champions Cup secured by one of the most stirring comebacks in the history of Europe’s most prestigious club event. But this was not so much a match of two halves as a match of two days. Kick-off was at 9.45pm local time. Andriy Shevchenko’s lacklustre concluding penalty was saved by Jerzy Dudek way past midnight. Thus, on May 25…

So Milan, the team who should not have been in the Champions League at all, ended up winning their seventh European Cup as if nothing untoward had happened. No Calciopoli, no points deductions, no appeals, no pressures behind the scenes, no friendly media, etc. Of course, no blame for that sad episode attaches to two-goal hero Pippo Inzaghi or coach Carlo Ancelotti, who ignored almost all the “expert” advice of former players and coaches by starting with the 33-year-old up front rather than Alberto Gilardino. Paolo Maldini, another of the old guard, collected a fifth winners’ medal, raising speculation about his chances of equalling Paco Gento’s record of six for Real Madrid in the1950s and ’60s. After the game, Ancelotti said, with considerable sense given the dressing-room delirium, that Milan’s…

To be fair to Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon it was UEFA’s idea that the Champions League finalists nominate a figurehead to lead their team up to receive the medals. At last year’s final two men in suits, Rick Parry, chief executive of Liverpool, and Umberto Gandini, Milan’s organising director, stepped up without attracting ridicule. Kenyon was not to know that this time he would look like a money man deluded by self-importance, because after Chelsea had trudged down with their loser’s medals, Manchester United would be led by a man with just a tad more football distinction than Kenyon, Sir Bobby Charlton, who then declined to accept a medal because he had not played. However unjustly, for many observers that summed up the gulf in class between Chelsea, a…

At the end of the fourth clasico in 18 days, when the final chapter of an epic saga had ended with controversial climax, someone finally came up with a suitably cinematic name for it. “This,” said Cristiano Ronaldo, “was Mission Impossible 4”. He had insisted that what mattered was who “laughed last”. But it wasn’t the Real Madrid star. Instead, he wore a face like thunder and Barcelona were celebrating their place in the Champions League final against Manchester United. When he reached Barcelona airport, Ronaldo’s hand gesture suggested “we were robbed”. Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho did the same. Somehow, that kind of bitter, recriminatory ending felt inevitable. By the end, both sides of Spain’s great divide had the discourse that they had clung to throughout and more “evidence”…

Only a few months back and everyone in football looked to Spain. The future was tiki-taka. Every player should aspire to be a Messi or Xavi. Barcelona would be kings forever and a day. Now the game knows better. Forget Spain; Germany had the answers all along. Ten-year plans. Players who grew up into directors. Fan-friendliness. Maybe the prosaic truth is that football’s frenetic pace – both on the field and off it – militates in favour of democracy and against dictatorship. No one club has ever won the modern Champions League two years in a row. The odds are well set against Bayern Munich breaking the spell, particularly after the fascinating gamble of bringing Pep Guardiola on board. Bayern chiefs Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge do not think this…

The game in Spain now stands head and shoulders above the rest of Europe in football’s international club competitions in the second decade of the new century. The national team won the 2010 World Cup, in between a 2008 and 2010 European Championship double, and the clubs have carried the flag forward. Barcelona (now twice) and Real Madrid have won half of the first six of the decade’s Champions League finals, while compatriots Atletico Madrid and Sevilla have carried off the Europa League twice each. For all of the Premier League’s worldwide popularity, the glory game right now is being monopolised by Barcelona and Real Madrid, and on an individual level, by eternal rivals Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – even if only the Argentinian made it through to Berlin…

Nobody has done more than Diego simeone to take atletico madrid away from their loser stereotype. Before the argentinian became coach, they had been a side that always found a way to lose from nowhere, a team that specialised in failure on the biggest stage – particularly when it came to their city rivals, Real madrid. simeone has added toughness and organisation, and made them a combative but skilful team. and yet it turns out that, for all his successes, all he has done is to elevate the stage on which they fail. Twice in three seasons they have come desperately close to beating Real in a champions league final. and twice they have lost. Two years ago they surrendered an injury-time equaliser; this time they missed a penalty and…

Been there. Done that. Now got the European Cup. The 2019 UEFA Champions League showdown was not the best of finals. Nor was it the worst, though the outcome had been predicted because Liverpool brought the stronger team, the deeper squad and the greater investment. Most important, however, Jurgen Klopp’s team boasted one crucial quality denied to Tottenham: the weight of experience from the same occasion a year earlier. They had no cause for pause to gauge the emotional temperature or catch their breath in the rarefied atmosphere of the world’s biggest club game. All that had been computed in Kyiv. Hence it was straight down to business: into attack, into the penalty box and into the lead – courtesy of Sadio Mane’s chip, Moussa Sissoko’s handball, referee Damir Skomina’s…

Jorge Burruchaga, one of four men banned in the unending “Marseille Scandal”, is to sue the French Football Federation for £500,000 – another element of confusion in the drama. Marseille have been stripped of just about everything except the Champions League trophy, and Burruchaga, the 31-year-old whose late goal won the1986 World Cup for Argentina, has been punished by the FFF along with two other players and an official. Christophe Robert, Burruchaga’s former Valenciennes team-mate, and Marseille’s Jean-Jacques Eydelie also have been suspended sine die, and so has Jean-Pierre Bernes, Marseille’s former general manager. The immediate fall-out was the FIFA-UEFA decision to promote Milan in Marseille’s place for the World Club Cup game against Sao Paulo of Brazil, and for the European Super Cup clash with Parma. Any lingering doubts…

“When you are 18 years old, you don’t have any fear. You just want to play, to experience everything as quickly as possible, even if it is the biggest game in European club football. That is how I felt when Ajax reached the Champions League final in1995. I just wanted to play, even if it was for one minute, because you never know when you will get another chance in a game of that importance. We knew what we were doing and we knew it could work against Milan. They were an amazing team with Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta, and they had beaten Barcelona very easily [4-0] in the Champions League final the year before, but this was not our concern. We went into the match feeling…

In the end it was plain black and white – black for the change strip that Real madrid wore in the match and white for the special shirt the players donned to celebrate La Octava - their record eighth european cup triumph. The difference between the teams in the first one-nation final was also black and white, or precisely, black and orange. madrid were in the end, three goals better. Their defenders knew exactly what they were doing, the midfield mixed effort and poise, and the strikers moved with far superior class and understanding. Manchester united may be the richest club in europe but football grandeur remains about far more than money – thank goodness – and Real madrid are way out front in a class of their own. as…

Real Madrid collected their ninth European Cup at Hampden Park, where they had also recorded their fifth and most memorable triumph, against Eintracht Frankfurt in1960. But Zinedine Zidane’s decisive goal against Bayer Leverkusen ranked alongside anything such former Real greats as Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas produced. Madrid were favourites against the Germans but they were struggling to stay on terms at1-1 with a minute remaining until the interval. Zidane, who had had a quiet first half, loped forward more in hope than expectation when Argentinian midfielder Santiago Solari sliced open a gap on the Madrid left flank. There, Brazil full-back Roberto Carlos exploded on the overlap to swing a looping cross just short of the penalty box. Zidane saw his chance, stepped beyond Michael Ballack and uncoiled his…

All roads lead to Istanbul. All reflections on the Serie A season just finished inevitably have to begin in Istanbul, where Milan’s remarkable second-half collapse in the Champions League final against Liverpool rounded off a miserable month, during which they had also lost the Italian title to eternal rivals Juventus. For Italian media commentators, there was little doubt about the Champions League final – Milan lost it rather than Liverpool winning it. “Mad Milan Make a Present of the Cup to Liverpool,” read the front page headline of La Repubblica; Il Messaggero struck a similar note, heading their match report with “Milan Commit Suicide”; Gazzetta dello Sport carried the front page banner headline “Milan In A Nightmare”; and Corriere Dello Sport went with “A Milan That Would Make You Cry”.…

“You had already played in a number of important finals, but the Champions League final in Athens was the first in which you were the key player. Did you feel that responsibility? I always know what my tasks are within the team, and can say at any time: “I’m ready”. It’s not a burden for me. It is a responsibility, but not at all a weight. Do you think that the game against Liverpool in Athens was the most important of your life? No. The most important match in my life will always be the next one. You must not dwell too much on what has been achieved – or you run the risk losing motivation. Milan also played in the 2005 Champions League final, another important match, but we…

Barcelona’s motto describes them as “more than a club”. They were certainly more of a team than outgoing holders Manchester United in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, where the eternal city provided an indisputably finite outcome to the 2008-09 Champions League campaign. The showdown between the two most entertaining and positive teams in Europe had been happily hyped but reality fell below the dream; that was largely down to United who, once largely down to United who, once they went behind, never looked capable of making a match of it. Barcelona claimed a surprisingly decisive victory over a disjointed United side and, in so doing, secured a third European crown – after1992 and 2006 – and left the world and English champions thoroughly outplayed. The Catalans thus became the first Spanish club…

Ladislav Kubala, Luis Suarez, Joan Segarra, Marti Verges, Eulogio Martinez, Sandor Kocsis, Evaristo de Macedo …these were the men who laid the foundations in the1950s of Barcelona’s rich European Cup heritage which continues to be fulfilled by Carles Puyol, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, David Villa, Pedro and, of course, Lionel Messi. Here is football irony. In the early 1950s, just before the new dawn broke over the original Champions Cup, Barcelona wanted to sign Argentinian Alfredo Di Stefano, but he went to Real Madrid and history tells a legendary tale of what happened next. Now Barcelona have found – and kept – an Argentinian from whom they draw inspirational, European-commanding pride. Messi’s magnificent12th goal in13 Champions League matches this season inspired brilliant Barca to a 3-1 wipe-out of Manchester United in…

How do you deal with a front three of lionel messi, luis suarez and neymar? it must be the first question any coach who comes up against Barca asks, but it is one to which, at the moment, it seems there is no answer. Bayern munich’s former Barcelona boss, pep guardiola, looking at his former side before their semi-final meeting, effectively decided not to bother. he played three man-markers at the back and pressed high into midfield, remembering, perhaps, how marcelo Bielsa’s athletic Bilbao had unsettled his Barca. maybe, he seems to have reasoned, unused as they are to being pressed, Barca’s midfield could be shaken by having done to them what they had habitually done to others. This Barcelona is more varied than the Pep Guardiola incarnation a handful of…

So the club that includes the state-owned airline of a human-rights-abusing emirate as a sponsor beat the club owned by that emirate. Football breathed a sigh of relief: the sacred cup had held back the fullest tide of sports washing for one more season. But, in truth, the European game’s finale was an unedifying spectacle all-round. Let nobody be under any illusion what the 2020 Champions League final represented, or why Qatar Airways was so keen to promote it as the “Qlassico”. This was the result of a meeting held a decade ago at the Elysee Palace in Paris between the then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar, then UEFA president Michel Platini and the owners of Paris Saint-Germain. Ten days later, Platini voted…

Hala Madrid, indeed. No denying their right to parade a record-extending 14th Champions League trophy. Victory over Liverpool in the Stade de France climaxed a sequence of footballing assassinations. They unleashed a minimum of shots against Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Manchester City and the Reds and made them all count. Ruthlessly. Coach Carlo Ancelotti and his team turned club history on its head. Alfredo Di Stefano’s original giants were demolished in1964 by the ruthless hold-and-hit strategy of Internazionale. Now Madrid took “their” cup home by restraining magical Luka Modric, “Sir Toni” Kroos and Casemiro to smother and conserve energy while unleashing counter-attack precision. Karim Benzema ended the campaign with a remarkable15 goals (44 in all competitions, a personal best) for a 34-year-old who had been written off years ago while Vinicius…