by Simon Wright

Created on: May 04, 2009   Last Updated: March 11, 2010

The Champions League is the premier club tournament in European football (soccer) and was introduced in 1992 as the successor to the European Cup. The Champions League is a source of great wealth to the teams that participate in it and brings together the best club teams from all other Europe to compete against each other through group stages and then knockout rounds that ultimately lead to a season-ending finale.

Before getting into the structure that the Champions League employs, let's start by dealing with some of the controversy that surrounds the competition. The European Cup was the predecessor of the Champions League and was launched in 1955 with the noble aim of pitting all the champions of the various leagues in Europe against each other. Matches were played on a knockout stage from round one and all teams participating had to be the reigning champions from their domestic league or else the reigning European Cup winners.

When the Champions League was introduced, however, UEFA decided to widen the eligibility criteria so that teams that finished second, third or even fourth in the big European leagues were allowed entry as well. In recent years the tournament has been dominated by the English, Spanish and Italian teams and there have been many who have suggested that this has devalued the merits of the competition. Indeed, it may be that the Champions League is a first step towards a truly European league that will see the super powers from England, Spain, Italy and Germany break free of their domestic leagues.

Whatever your thoughts are on the merits or otherwise of the expanded Champions League, there is no doubt that it has been an incredibly successful competition in terms of its ability to attract sponsorship and the emphasis that the top teams have placed upon it. And I guess that the marketing men would have baulked at calling it the Champions and Also-Rans Cup!

The format of the Champions League is geared to ensure that as many of the big teams qualify for the latter stages as possible. The winners (and runners up) from the top ranked leagues get automatic qualification for the group stages, whilst the champions from the smaller leagues and the third and fourth placed teams from the bigger leagues have to enter into pre qualification rounds in order to gain access to the group stage.

The group stage then sees 32 teams split into 8 groups, with the top two teams from each group progressing to the last sixteen. Again, seeding is used to keep the

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