UEFA Cup Winners' Cup

UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
Cup Winners Cup.png
Founded 1960
Region Europe (UEFA)
Number of teams 32 (First Round)
49 (Total)[1]
Most successful club Spain FC Barcelona
(4 time champions, 2 times runner-up)
Website UEFA Cup Winners' Cup

The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (CWC) was a football club competition contested annually by the most recent winners of all European domestic cup competitions. The cup is one of the many inter-European club competitions that have been organised by UEFA. The first competition was held in the 1960–61 season, and the last in 1998–99. The competition was then abolished to make way for a further expansion to the UEFA Champions League, with domestic cup winners now gaining entry into the UEFA Cup, later renamed as UEFA Europa League.

Prior to its abolition, the Cup Winners' Cup was regarded as the second most prestigious European club competition out of the three major tournaments, behind the UEFA Champions League/European Cup and ahead of the UEFA Cup, although many commentators felt the Cup Winners' Cup was the easiest of the three competitions to win. However, no club successfully defended the Cup Winners' Cup, with such major names in European football as Rangers FC, FC Barcelona, Valencia CF, Dynamo Kiev, Arsenal, AC Milan and Manchester United failing to defend the trophy. The idea of the Cup Winners' Cup "jinx" against the defending side came to prominence particularly due to the unlikely manner of Arsenal's defeat in the 1995 final and the defeat of Paris Saint-Germain in 1997.[2]

From 1972 onwards, the winner of the tournament would go on to play the winner of the European Cup (later the UEFA Champions League) in the UEFA Super Cup. Since the abolition of the Cup Winners' Cup, the Super Cup place previously reserved for the CWC winner has been taken by the winner of the UEFA Cup, now Europa League.

From its inception until 1994, the competition was known as the European Cup Winners' Cup – from the 1994–95 season onwards, UEFA officially named the tournament the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. The competition is also sometimes referred to as European Cup 2, EC2 or simply C2, usually in football statistics books and websites, although this shorthand was also used on some match tickets and in programmes. Despite the abolition of the Cup Winners' Cup, the modern Europa League is still referred to in shorthand as EC3, in order to avoid confusion with the CWC.

Contents

Format

UEFA Cup Winners' Cup trophy

Throughout its 39-year history, the Cup Winners' Cup was always a straight knock-out tournament with two-legged home and away ties up until the single match final staged at a neutral venue, the only exception to this being the two-legged final in the competition's first year. The format was identical to the original European Champions' Cup with 32 teams contesting four knock-out rounds prior to the showpiece final, with the tournament usually running from September to May each year. In later years, a regular August preliminary round was added to reduce the number of entrants to 32 following the influx of new UEFA member nations during the 1990s.

Entry was restricted to one club from each UEFA member association, the only exception being to allow the current Cup Winners' Cup holders to enter alongside their nation's new domestic cup winners in order to allow them a chance to defend their CWC title (although no club ever managed to do this). However, if this team also qualified for the European Champions' Cup then they would default on their place in the Cup Winners' Cup and no other team would replace them.

On occasions when a club completed a domestic league and cup 'double' that club would enter the European Cup/UEFA Champions League and their place in the Cup Winners' Cup would be taken by the domestic cup runners-up. In 1998/99, the competition's final year, SC Heerenveen of the Netherlands entered the CWC despite only reaching the semi-final of the previous season's Dutch Cup. This was due to both Dutch Cup finalists Ajax and PSV qualifying for the recently expanded Champions League. Heerenveen won a third-place playoff and became the only club to enter the Cup Winners' Cup without having contested their own domestic cup final the previous year.

The winners of the League Cup competitions held in some countries were never allowed to enter the Cup Winners' Cup. Instead, the winners of these competitions were sometimes allowed to enter the UEFA Cup.

History

Inauguration

Mirroring the circumstances behind the creation of the European Cup five years earlier, the idea for a pan-European cup competition contested by all of Europe's domestic cup winners came from prominent European sports journalists. The European Cup had proven to be a great success and the Fairs Cup had also proven popular – as a result, other ideas for new European football tournaments were being aired. One proposal was for a tournament based upon the format of the Champions' Cup, but with national cup winners rather than champions taking part, which could run alongside that competition.

The inaugural Cup Winners' Cup was held in the 1960–61 season and was basically a semi-official pilot tournament. However the initial reaction to the competition's creation was unenthusiastic on the part of many of Europe's top clubs – many European associations did not have domestic cup competitions at the time and in those countries that did, the cup competition was generally held in low esteem and often not taken seriously by the bigger clubs. It was essentially only in England, Scotland and to a lesser extent Germany and Spain that the domestic cup was considered especially prestigious. Many were sceptical about the viability of a European tournament for cup winners and many of the bigger clubs eligible to contest the first CWC turned down the chance to enter, such as Atlético de Madrid of Spain and AS Monaco of France.

Ultimately the inaugural CWC was contested by just 10 clubs (with Fiorentina of Italy winning the two-legged final against the Scottish team Rangers F.C.) but the games were generally well attended and the response from the public and the media to the new tournament was positive and enthusiastic. For the tournament's second season in 1961–62, UEFA took over the running of all aspects of the competition and this time all the clubs eligible to enter accepted the opportunity. By 1968, all UEFA member nations had set up domestic cup competitions due to the success of the Cup Winners' Cup which by then had firmly established itself as Europe's second most prestigious club competition[3].

Prestige

The Cup Winners' Cup was a key component of the European football calendar throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The cup was regarded by UEFA as its second most important club competition, even though the tournament was felt to be weaker than both the European Cup and the UEFA Cup in terms of the overall quality of the teams taking part. The tournament gained a reputation for showcasing attacking, entertaining football and also for the remarkable number of spectacular long range goals in many of the finals.

Notable sides to have won the Cup Winners' Cup and some notable finals include:

No club managed to retain the Cup Winners' Cup (the so-called "CWC jinx"), although FC Barcelona won it on four occasions (1979, 82, 89, 97) and finished runners up twice (1969, 91). Aberdeen won the tournament in 1983, however only managed to reach the semi-final the year after, in 1984. Anderlecht won it twice (1976, 78), and finished runners up twice (1977, 90) and Ajax failed to defend their title in 1988, losing out to K.V. Mechelen; in addition, three finals over four years between 1993 and 1997 saw the holder reach the final only to lose (Parma 1993 and 1994, Arsenal 1994 and 1995, Paris Saint-Germain 1996 – 1997).

Decline

After the establishment of the UEFA Champions League (formerly called the European Champion Clubs' Cup) in the early 1990s, the standing and prestige of the Cup Winners' Cup began to decline. With the expansion of the Champions League in 1997 to allow more than one team from the highest ranked member associations to enter, the CWC began to look noticeably inferior. At the time of the Champions League expansion, UEFA also considered expanding the CWC from 32 teams to 64 by allowing a second team to enter from many countries, although by what qualification criteria the second entrants would be determined were never settled upon – ultimately UEFA did not make any of these changes to the CWC. Many of the bigger teams who would previously have entered the CWC were now gaining entry to the Champions League instead by finishing second in their domestic league – such as CWC holders FC Barcelona in 1997/98 and Bayern Munich and PSV in 1998/99 – and this greatly weakened the CWC.

By the late 1990s, the CWC had come to be seen as a second-rate competition with only one or two big name teams available to enter each year and the interest in the tournament from both major clubs and the public dropped. Finally, with the further expansion of the UEFA Champions League to include as many as three or four teams from the top footballing nations, the decision was taken to abolish the competition after the end of the 1998/99 tournament, which was won by Lazio. The trophy was permanently awarded to FC Barcelona as they were the most successful club in the competition, despite protests from Lazio that, as legitimate last winners, claimed the title to be definitively handed on their hands. Since then, domestic cup winners who do not otherwise qualify for the Champions League are given a place in the UEFA Europa League.

Cup Winners' Cup finals

Season Winner Score Runner-up Venue
1960–61

Details

Scotland Rangers 0 – 2 Italy Fiorentina Ibrox Stadium,
Glasgow
Italy Fiorentina 2 – 1 Scotland Rangers Stadio Comunale,
Florence
This was the only final played in two legs, home and away
Fiorentina won 4-1 on aggregate
 
1961–62

Details

Spain Atlético Madrid 1 – 1
aet
Italy Fiorentina Hampden Park,
Glasgow
Atlético Madrid won the final replay, 3 – 0 at Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, Stuttgart
1962–63

Details

England Tottenham Hotspur 5 – 1 Spain Atlético Madrid De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1963–64

Details

Portugal Sporting CP 3 – 3
aet
Hungary MTK Budapest Heysel Stadium,
Brussels
Sporting Lisbon won the final replay, 1 – 0 at Bosuil Stadium, Antwerp
1964–65

Details

England West Ham United 2 – 0 West Germany 1860 Munich Wembley Stadium,
London
1965–66

Details

West Germany Borussia Dortmund 2 – 1
aet
England Liverpool Hampden Park,
Glasgow
1966–67

Details

West Germany Bayern Munich 1 – 0
aet
Scotland Rangers Frankenstadion,
Nuremberg
1967–68

Details

Italy Milan 2 – 0 West Germany Hamburg De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1968–69

Details

Czechoslovakia Slovan Bratislava 3 – 2 Spain Barcelona St. Jakob Stadium,
Basel
1969–70

Details

England Manchester City 2 – 1 Poland Górnik Zabrze Prater Stadium,
Vienna
1970–71

Details

England Chelsea 1 – 1
aet
Spain Real Madrid Karaiskakis Stadium,
Piraeus
Chelsea won the final replay, 2 – 1 at Karaiskakis Stadium, Piraeus
1971–72

Details

Scotland Rangers 3 – 2 Soviet Union Dynamo Moscow Camp Nou,
Barcelona
1972–73

Details

Italy Milan 1 – 0 England Leeds United Kaftanzoglio Stadium,
Salonika
1973–74

Details

East Germany Magdeburg 2 – 0 Italy Milan De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1974–75

Details

Soviet Union Dynamo Kyiv 3 – 0 Hungary Ferencváros St. Jakob Stadium,
Basel
1975–76

Details

Belgium Anderlecht 4 – 2 England West Ham United Heysel Stadium,
Brussels
1976–77

Details

West Germany Hamburg 2 – 0 Belgium Anderlecht Olympic Stadium,
Amsterdam
1977–78

Details

Belgium Anderlecht 4 – 0 Austria Austria Wien Parc des Princes,
Paris
1978–79

Details

Spain Barcelona 4 – 3
aet
West Germany Fortuna Düsseldorf St. Jakob Stadium,
Basel
1979–80

Details

Spain Valencia 0 – 0
aet
England Arsenal Heysel Stadium,
Brussels
5 – 4 on penalty shootout;
1980–81

Details

Soviet Union Dinamo Tbilisi 2 – 1 East Germany Carl Zeiss Jena Rheinstadion,
Düsseldorf
1981–82

Details

Spain Barcelona 2 – 1 Belgium Standard Liège Camp Nou,
Barcelona
1982–83

Details

Scotland Aberdeen 2 – 1
aet
Spain Real Madrid Nya Ullevi,
Gothenburg
1983–84

Details

Italy Juventus 2 – 1 Portugal Porto St. Jakob Stadium,
Basel
1984–85

Details

England Everton 3 – 1 Austria Rapid Vienna De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1985–86

Details

Soviet Union Dynamo Kyiv 3 – 0 Spain Atlético Madrid Stade de Gerland,
Lyon
1986–87

Details

Netherlands Ajax 1 – 0 East Germany Lokomotive Leipzig Spiros Louis Stadium,
Athens
1987–88

Details

Belgium KV Mechelen 1 – 0 Netherlands Ajax Stade de la Meinau,
Strasbourg
1988–89

Details

Spain Barcelona 2 – 0 Italy Sampdoria Wankdorf Stadium,
Bern
1989–90

Details

Italy Sampdoria 2 – 0
aet
Belgium Anderlecht Nya Ullevi,
Gothenburg
1990–91

Details

England Manchester United 2 – 1 Spain Barcelona De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1991–92

Details

West Germany Werder Bremen 2 – 0 France AS Monaco Estádio da Luz,
Lisbon
1992–93

Details

Italy Parma 3 – 1 Belgium Royal Antwerp Wembley Stadium,
London
1993–94

Details

England Arsenal 1 – 0 Italy Parma Parken Stadium,
Copenhagen
1994–95

Details

Spain Real Zaragoza 2 – 1
aet
England Arsenal Parc des Princes,
Paris
1995–96

Details

France Paris Saint-Germain 1 – 0 Austria Rapid Vienna King Baudouin Stadium,
Brussels
1996–97

Details

Spain Barcelona 1 – 0 France Paris Saint-Germain De Kuip,
Rotterdam
1997–98

Details

England Chelsea 1 – 0 Germany Stuttgart Råsunda Stadium,
Stockholm
1998–99

Details

Italy Lazio 2 – 1 Spain Mallorca Villa Park,
Birmingham

Records and statistics

See also

Notes and references

External links