who invented the European Cup competiton

A Frenchman is responsible for the World Cup- Jules Rimet.

A Frenchman is responsible for delivering the modern Olympics - Pierre de Coubertin.

Which crazy man came up with the idea of the European Cup competition?

Anyone know? Henri Delaunay? Gabriel Hanot?

Hanot- a Frenchman again......

Hanot's baby ages well for golden jubilee

European Cup enters its 50th season of drama and prestige, writes David Lacey

Monday August 9, 2004 The Guardian

The European Cup wears its years well. At 50 it abounds with enthusiasm even if the present bloated nature of the tournament smacks of middle-aged spread.

Since the early 90s it has been known as the Champions League, a contradiction in terms since most of the participants are not the champions of their national leagues. Nevertheless the competition's sense of excellence has endured although it is at present experiencing a certain degree of levelling-down.

Either way it remains the most prestigious football tournament in the world barring the World Cup itself. For quality and drama the recent European Championship paled by comparison with the average Champions League and even the 2002 World Cup failed to produce a match to rank alongside some of the more memorable European Cup encounters.

Gabriel Hanot would be proud of his progeny. In the 1950s Hanot, a former French international turned selector and journalist who became editor of L'Equipe, came up with the idea of a European knockout competition for the champions of the national leagues.

His idea was based on the Mitropa Cup, a tournament created by the great Austria coach Hugo Meisl which prospered between the wars but dwindled in importance thereafter. It involved clubs from Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia with Italy and Switzerland participating later on.

Hanot's tournament was an instant hit largely because it coincided with the emergence of Real Madrid as a multi- national team of all the talents unprecedented in the club game. As Real won the first five European Cup finals with mounting grandeur the desire to meet and beat Ferenc Puskas, Alfredo di Stefano, Gento and the rest grew from one season to the next.

In England the appetite for European competition had been whetted by a series of friendlies between leading Football League sides and outstanding opposition from the continent. As early as 1945 Moscow Dynamo had drawn huge crowds on a tour of Britain and on a memorable December night at Molineux in 1954 Wolverhampton Wanderers, the League champions, beat Honved, on whom the Hungarian side that had beaten England 6-3 and 7-1 was based, 3-2 after going 2-0 down.

But if the public wanted European football on a regular basis the Football League, fearing fixture congestion, was not so sure. Chelsea, the 1955 champions, actually went into the draw for the first round of the inaugural European Cup and were due to meet Djurgarden of Sweden. The League, however, leant on Chelsea to withdraw and their place went to Gwardia Warsaw.

Hibernian, enriched by an attack renowned as "the famous five", did enter and reached the semi-finals, thus setting an early precedent for Scottish one- upmanship which reached its apotheosis when Jock Stein's Celtic became the first British team to win the European Cup when they came from behind to beat Internazionale 2-1 in the final in Lisbon. For all the subsequent successes of Liverpool and Manchester United this remains the most memorable British triumph in the European Cup.

Yet it is an inescapable fact that for eight seasons from 1976-77 to 1983-84 the trophy left England only once; in 1983 when Hamburg surprised Juventus in Athens. This period of English dominance coincided with flat spells in Italy and Spain along with the decline of Ajax and Bayern Munich, who had each completed European Cup hat-tricks earlier in the 70s.

While the total football played by the Ajax of Johann Cruyff and the Bayern of Franz Beckenbauer was never seriously apparent in the workmanlike English successes Liverpool did at least make a conscious effort to adapt their playing style to the greater subtleties of European competition.

Liverpool had reached the semi-finals in 1965 before going out to Internazionale when they lost 3-0 in the San Siro having won 3-1 at Anfield. Bill Shankly complained about his players being kept awake by monastery bells near the team's headquarters near Lake Como. When, two seasons later, Liverpool went out to Ajax 7-3 on aggregate Shankly grumbled about the opposition's defensive tactics and after the Kop had applauded Red Star Belgrade off the field, his team having been outplayed by the Yugoslavs in 1973, Shanks dismissed the oppositon as "a bunch of fancy men".

Bob Paisley, Shankly's successor, was more realistic. "Our approach was a bit frantic," he admitted. "We treated every match like a war. The strength of Britsh football lay in our challenge for the ball . . . but we discovered it was no use winning the ball if you finished up on your backside in a desperate position."

Liverpool learned sufficiently well to win the European Cup four times. Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest won it twice largely through defensive resilience, rather like Porto last season.

Aston Villa beat Bayern Munich in the 1982 final in Rotterdam after losing their first-choice goalkeeper, Jimmy Rimmer, in the ninth minute with a neck injury. The heroics of the substitute, Nigel Spink, making only his second full appearance for the first team, and a toe-poke from Peter Withe brought Villa victory.

Matt Busby's Manchester United had set the precedent for English success in the European Cup with their unforgettable demolition of Benfica's defence at the start of extra time in the 1968 final at Wembley. A typical piece of individualism by George Best, who two years earlier had destroyed the Portuguese side in the Stadium of Light, produced the first of three goals in six minutes to complete United's long recovery from the Munich tragedy 10 years earlier.

It took the English game rather longer to produce European champions following the Heysel disaster of 1985, in which 39 mainly Italian spectators died when a wall collapsed after Liverpool fans had rushed towards a Juventus section of the crowd. By the time English teams were allowed to compete in Europe again six years later a generation of experience at this level had been lost.

The switch to a part-league, part-knockout format, moreover, created the fixture congestion which the Football League had feared in the first place. No longer could a team reach the quarter-finals by early November and spend the next four months concentrating solely on domestic issues.

So far, in the Champions League, only Manchester United have managed, with their Treble of 1999, to beat the system. Of the rest, while the standard remains high, only Milan and Real Madrid have seriously recaptured the flavour of the earlier years.

Removing one of the group stages has made the present competition less of a grind but the desire to have a European league proper remains. And if that ever happens the dream of Gabriel Hanot will have become just another treadmill.

-- "Luis Garcia laughed off suggestions that a Spanish referee would help the Reds in the CL final."