This tournament was inaugurated in 1955 at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L’Equipe Gabriel Hanot as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Club’s Cup, abbreviated to European Cup.
The competition began in 1955/56 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. This qualification system continued until 1992. In the 1992/93 season, the tournament was renamed to UEFA Champions League and in 1997/98, eligibility was expanded to include not just domestic champions but also the best performing runners up according to UEFA’s coefficient ranking list. In UEFA’s coefficient system, a team finishing second in the Spanish La Liga would be more deserving of an automatic place in the Champions League than a team finishing first in, for example, Polish Orange Ekstraklasa. As a result, the system was restructured to force “weaker” national champions to qualify for the group stages, while other, “stronger” national runners-up would automatically get places.According list below, since 1955 52 clubs and 10 countries have written his name in the European Football winners. Clubs: Real Madrid (9 wins), Milan (7), Liverpool (5), Ajax and Bayern Munich (4), Barcelona, Benfica, Inter, Juventus, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Porto (2) and Aston Villa, Borussia Dortmund, Celtic Glasgow, Feyenoord, Hamburg, Olympique Marseille, PSV Eindhoven, Steaua Bucarest and Red Star Belgrade (1).
Countries: Italy and Spain (11 times), England (10), Germany and Holland (6), Portugal (4) and France, Rumania, Scotland and Serbia (1).