- UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
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"European Cup Winners' Cup" redirects here. For the competition trophy, see European Cup Winners' Cup (trophy)."Cup Winners' Cup" redirects here. For the African competition, see African Cup Winners' Cup. For the Asian competition, see Asian Cup Winner's Cup. For the North, Central American and Caribbean competition, see CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup. For the Oceanian competition, see Oceania Cup Winners' Cup.
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 
Founded 1960 Abolished 1999 Region Europe (UEFA) Number of teams 32 (first round) Last champions Lazio Website UEFA Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 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—but not recognised by the governing body of European football until two years later.[1] The final tournament was held in 1998–99, after which it was absorbed by the UEFA Cup.[1]
Prior to its abolition, the European Cup Winners' Cup was regarded as the second most prestigious European club competition out of the three major tournaments, behind the UEFA Champions League and ahead of the UEFA Cup, although many commentators felt the European Cup Winners' Cup was the easiest of the three competitions to win. However, no club successfully defended the European Cup Winners' Cup, with such major names in European football as FC Barcelona, Arsenal, AC Milan, and Manchester United failing to defend the trophy. The idea of the European 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 UEFA Cup Winner's Cup, the UEFA Super Cup place previously reserved for the CWC winner has been taken by the winner of the UEFA Cup, now UEFA 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 Winner's Cup.
Contents
Format
The European Cup Winners' Cup
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. In common with other UEFA club tournaments, the away goal applied when aggregate scores was parity. 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.
History
See also: European Cup Winners' Cup (trophy)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
See also: List of UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winnersNotable sides to have won the Cup Winners' Cup and some notable finals include:
- 1963: Tottenham Hotspur 5-1 Atlético Madrid - Tottenham became the first British side to win a European trophy, two years after becoming the first post-war side to complete the English league and cup double. Spurs beat reigning champions Atlético Madrid by a scoreline which remains the joint largest margin of victory in a one-match European final.
- 1965: West Ham United 2-0 1860 Munich - Played at Wembley, the West Ham side contained Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters who would go on to play an important role in England's victory in the following years World Cup final at the same stadium.
- 1966: Borussia Dortmund 2-1 Liverpool - Dortmund became the first German club to win a European title.
- 1968: AC Milan 2-0 Hamburg - Milan went on to follow up this success with victory in the European Champions' Cup the following year, making them one of only two teams to win the trophies consecutively.
- 1972: Rangers 3-2 Dynamo Moscow - Rangers' victory was marred by a pitch invasion by their fans, which led to a one-year ban for the team from European football, marking the first time the holders were unable to defend the title.
- 1973: AC Milan 1-0 Leeds United - Referee Christos Michas was later banned by UEFA from refereeing international club matches due to match fixing..[4] The crowd at the final reacted to his perceived bias towards Milan that they threw missiles during the victors' lap of honour, but despite protests the result was not overturned.[5]
- 1976: Anderlecht 4-2 West Ham United - 1976 marked a run of three consecutive finals for Anderlecht, losing the following year, before regaining the title in 1978.
- 1979: Barcelona 4-3 Fortuna Düsseldorf - Barcelona, the tournaments most succesful participants, won the their first of their four titles.[6]
- 1984: Juventus 2-1 FC Porto - Juventus would go on to become the second team to follow victory in the Cup Winners' Cup with a successful European Cup campaign.
- 1985: Everton 3-1 Rapid Wien - Everton, who also won the English league title the same season, became the second side to be barred from defending their title the following season due to a five-year ban on English clubs entering UEFA competitions after the Heysel stadium disaster.
- 1988: Mechelen 1-0 Ajax - Mechelen became one of a handful of clubs to win a European trophy in their debut European campagin.
- 1989: Barcelona 2-0 Sampdoria - Johan Cruyff became the first manager to win the CWC with two different teams, having managed Ajax in their 1987 final victory.
- 1991: Manchester United 2-1 Barcelona - United won the CWC in the first season English representatives were reinstated after the Heysel ban ended. It also marked Alex Ferguson matching Cruyff's feat in 1989, having also led Aberdeen to victory in the 1983 tournament.
- 1999: Lazio 2-1 Real Mallorca - Lazio won the final CWC at Villa Park.
No club managed to retain the Cup Winners' Cup (the so-called "CWC jinx"), although a number of teams followed up their victories with a losing appearance in the following seasons final. Anderlecht won it in both 1976 an 1978, and finished runners up in between, 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, and Paris Saint-Germain 1996 and 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. Since then, domestic cup winners who do not otherwise qualify for the Champions League are given a place in the UEFA Europa League.
Records and statistics
Main article: UEFA Cup Winners' Cup records and statisticsBy club
Team Winners Runners-up Years won Years runner-up Barcelona 4 2 1979, 1982, 1989, 1997 1969, 1991 Anderlecht 2 2 1976, 1978 1977, 1990 Milan 2 1 1968, 1973 1974 Chelsea 2 0 1971, 1998 – Dynamo Kyiv 2 0 1975, 1986 – Atlético Madrid 1 2 1962 1963, 1986 Rangers 1 2 1972 1961, 1967 Arsenal 1 2 1994 1980, 1995 Fiorentina 1 1 1961 1962 West Ham United 1 1 1965 1976 Hamburg 1 1 1977 1968 Ajax 1 1 1987 1988 Sampdoria 1 1 1990 1989 Parma 1 1 1993 1994 Paris Saint-Germain 1 1 1996 1997 Tottenham Hotspur 1 0 1963 – Sporting CP 1 0 1964 – Borussia Dortmund 1 0 1966 – Bayern Munich 1 0 1967 – Slovan Bratislava 1 0 1969 – Manchester City 1 0 1970 – 1. FC Magdeburg 1 0 1974 – Valencia 1 0 1980 – Dinamo Tbilisi 1 0 1981 – Aberdeen 1 0 1983 – Juventus 1 0 1984 – Everton 1 0 1985 – Mechelen 1 0 1988 – Manchester United 1 0 1991 – Werder Bremen 1 0 1992 – Real Zaragoza 1 0 1995 – Lazio 1 0 1999 – Real Madrid 0 2 – 1971, 1983 Rapid Wien 0 2 – 1985, 1996 MTK Hungária 0 1 – 1964 1860 Munich 0 1 – 1965 Liverpool 0 1 – 1966 Górnik Zabrze 0 1 – 1970 Dynamo Moscow 0 1 – 1972 Leeds United 0 1 – 1973 Ferencváros 0 1 – 1975 Austria Wien 0 1 – 1978 Fortuna Düsseldorf 0 1 – 1979 Carl Zeiss Jena 0 1 – 1981 Standard Liège 0 1 – 1982 Porto 0 1 – 1984 Lokomotive Leipzig 0 1 – 1987 AS Monaco 0 1 – 1992 Royal Antwerp 0 1 – 1993 Stuttgart 0 1 – 1998 Real Mallorca 0 1 – 1999 See also
- International club competition records
- UEFA competition records
- List of UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winners
- UEFA Cup Winners' Cup records and statistics
- List of UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winning managers
References
- ^ a b uefadirect, Issue 100: August 2010, Page 15 "European Cup Winners' Cup makes its debut".
- ^ 1996/97: Ronaldo spot on for Barça
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ UEFA asked to probe United's final defeat Yorkshire Evening Post, 3 April 2009, retrieved on 28 May 2009
- ^ Uefa asked to probe Leeds United's 1973 Cup Winners' Cup defeat to AC Milan Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2009, retrieved on 28 May 2009
- ^ uefa.com – UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. En.archive.uefa.com. Retrieved on 2011-04-10.
External links
- Cup Winners Cup Topscorers, at RSSSF
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Seasons 1960–61 · 1961–62 · 1962–63 · 1963–64 · 1964–65 · 1965–66 · 1966–67 · 1967–68 · 1968–69 · 1969–70 · 1970–71 · 1971–72 · 1972–73 · 1973–74 · 1974–75 · 1975–76 · 1976–77 · 1977–78 · 1978–79 · 1979–80 · 1980–81 · 1981–82 · 1982–83 · 1983–84 · 1984–85 · 1985–86 · 1986–87 · 1987–88 · 1988–89 · 1989–90 · 1990–91 · 1991–92 · 1992–93 · 1993–94 · 1994–95 · 1995–96 · 1996–97 · 1997–98 · 1998–99Finals Records and statistics · Top scorers · Trophy · Winning managers · Winning teams International club football FIFA · Club World Cup (stats) · Intercontinental Cup (defunct) (stats) ·
Confederation and inter-confederation competition winners · TeamsAsia 
Africa Europe North,
Central America
and the CaribbeanOceania South America See also International club women's football. UEFA competitions National teams European Football Championship (U-21 · U-19 · U-17) · Women's Championship (U-19 · U-17) · Futsal Championship (U-21 (defunct)) · Meridian Cup (defunct)Clubs Champions League · Europa League · Cup Winners' Cup (defunct) · Intertoto Cup (defunct) · Super Cup · Intercontinental Cup (defunct) · Women's Champions League · Futsal CupAmateur Categories:- UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
- Recurring sporting events established in 1960
- Recurring events disestablished in 1999
- Defunct UEFA club competitions
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