The history of the European Cup and UEFA Champions League spans over sixty years of competition, finding winners and runners-up from all over the continent.
The 2002–03 UEFA Champions League was the 11th season of UEFA's premier European club football tournament, the UEFA Champions League, since its rebranding in 1992, and the 48th European Cup tournament overall. The competition was won by Milan, who beat Juventus on penalties in the European Cup's first ever all-Italian final, to win their sixth European title, and its first in nine years. Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy was again the top scorer, scoring 12 goals over the two group stages and knockout stage, in addition to two goals he had scored in the qualifying phase, although his side bowed out in the quarter-finals and missed out on the chance of playing in a final at their own stadium.
This page indexes the individual year in association football pages. Each year is annotated with one or more significant events as a reference point.
This page details statistics of the UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League. Unless notified these statistics concern all seasons since inception of the UEFA Cup in the 1971–72 season, including qualifying rounds. The UEFA Cup replaced the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in the 1971–72 season, so the Fairs Cup is not considered a UEFA competition, and hence clubs' records in the Fairs Cup are not considered part of their European record.
Football clubs from La Liga (Spain) have won a record 70 continental and worldwide titles. Real Madrid, the most successful of them, have won the European Cup on 14 separate occasions and claimed 29 trophies in total. Barcelona have won twenty continental and worldwide titles, while Atlético Madrid have claimed eight. Sevilla have won eight and Valencia have won seven trophies to their name. Additionally, Deportivo La Coruña have been regulars in the UEFA Champions League, while Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol, Alavés, Zaragoza and Mallorca have all contested major finals in second-tier competitions and below. Smaller La Liga clubs, like Villarreal, Celta Vigo and Málaga have also found success in Europe, reaching the latter stages of the Champions League and winning the Europa League, as is the case with Villarreal.
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club first participated in a European competition in 1955. The first international cup they took part in was the Latin Cup in which they participated as champions of Spain. The competition lasted from 1949 to 1957 and Real Madrid won both tournaments which they entered, the same number as Barcelona and Milan. Since becoming the first Spanish club to enter the European Cup in 1955, Real has competed in every UEFA-organized competition, except the Intertoto Cup and Conference League. They have missed out on European football only twice in their history, in the 1977–78 and 1996–97 seasons.
With 48 continental trophies won, English football clubs are the third-most successful in European football, behind Italy (49) and Spain (65). In the top-tier UEFA Champions League, a record six English clubs have won a total of 15 titles and lost a further 11 finals, behind Spanish clubs with 19 and 11, respectively. In the second-tier UEFA Europa League, English clubs are also second, with nine victories and eight losses in the finals. In the former second-tier UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, English teams won a record eight tiles and had a further five finalists. In the non-UEFA organized Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, English clubs provided four winners and four runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with six and three, respectively. In the newly created third-tier UEFA Europa Conference League, English clubs have a joint-record one title so far. In the former fourth-tier UEFA Intertoto Cup, England won four titles and had a further final appearance, placing it fifth in the rankings, although English clubs were notorious for treating the tournament with disdain, either sending "B" squads or withdrawing from it altogether. In the one-off UEFA Super Cup, England has ten winners and ten runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with 16 and 15, respectively. Similarly to the Intertoto Cup, English teams did not take the former Intercontinental Cup seriously enough, despite its international status of the Club World Championship. They a made a total of six appearances in the one-off competition, winning only one of them, and withdrew a further three times. English club have won the FIFA-organized Club World Cup three times, the third-most behind Spain and Brazil, with eight and four, respectively.
Associazione Calcio Milan is an Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy. The club was founded in 1899 as Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, and has competed in the Italian football league system since 1900. They were the first Italian club to qualify for the European Cup in 1955. Since then, the club has competed in every UEFA-organised competition, with the exception of the Intertoto Cup and the Europa Conference League.
Futbol Club Barcelona is a Spanish professional football club based in Barcelona. The club first participated in a European competition in 1910, and from 1955 onwards spent every season in one or more European competitions. The first international cup they took part in was the Pyrenees Cup. The competition lasted from 1910 to 1914 and Barcelona won four out of five editions. From 1914 to the beginning of the Latin Cup in 1949, Barcelona did not participate in any international competitions. From the 1955–56 season onward, with the exception of 1956–57, they are the only team to have played in the European competitions every year to date.
Proposals for a European Super League in association football consist of recurring attempts by individual teams or consortiums of association football clubs to advocate for the creation of an additional tier of European football outside of the traditional footballing pyramids of each national football association.
Juventus Football Club first participated in a Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) competition in 1958. The first international cup in which the club took part since the advent of professionalism in Italy was the Central European Cup, an inter-association tournament where the Old Lady made its debut in 1929. That competition lasted from 1927 to 1940 and the club reached the semi-finals in five editions. From 1938 to the Torneio Internacional de Clubes Campeões in 1951, in which they gained the final, Juventus did not participate in any international championships. After the establishing of UEFA in 1954 and the creation of its first own club competitions since the following year, they have competed, as of 2022, in six out of the seven confederation tournaments. After its triumph in 1985 Intercontinental Cup, the club obtained its first world champion title and contemporaneously claimed the trophy at least once in each of then five international competitions, making the Turinese club the first and only one worldwide in reach that achievement, which was revalidated after winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup fourteen years later and remained in force until the first Europa Conference League final played in 2022.
The UEFA Plaque was a honorific award given by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to those clubs that had won, at least once, the title in each of the three major international competitions organised by that confederation, namely the European Champions Cup, the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup. It was officially established in late 1987 and its first award was given in the second half of the following year, with Italian Juventus being the club to be honoured. A second award was initially scheduled for the second half of 1992 in favour of Dutch side Ajax, but it was not conferred for unclarified reasons by the confederation after Spanish team Barcelona —who did not comply with the requirement imposed by UEFA— at the same time unsuccessfully applied to European football's governing body for such recognition, being subsequently discontinued.
Italian football clubs have entered European association football competitions since season 1955–56, when Milan took part in European Cup competition. Nowadays, Italian football is the fourth force in Europe according to UEFA ranking, following the English, Spanish and German leagues. Italian clubs have also entered several times worldwide inter-club competitions since the 1963 Intercontinental Cup.
