Revisiting the magic of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup

The trophy from the 1971 final between Chelsea and Real Madrid

Without doubt, Real Madrid are the greatest European side of all time in terms of trophies won. The Los Blancos have won 10 European Cups/UEFA Champions Leagues and 2 UEFA Cups.

In addition to this, the club knows exactly what it takes to win once a competition reaches its business end – As illustrated by the fact that they have only lost three of the 13 Champions League finals they have been in and are unbeaten in UEFA Cup finals. That is a phenomenal 12-3 record in those two competitions.

But there is one major European trophy that Los Blancos have never won – Indeed, they have lost in the final of this competition on two separate occasions. Scratching your heads as to which tournament I am talking about? The answer is the now defunct UEFA Cup Winners Cup.

Inaugural tournament

Fiorentina won the inaugural competition held in 1960-61

The Cup Winners’ Cup was founded in 1960 as a purely knock-out competition involving just the domestic cup winners from various UEFA member nations. At the time of inception, it was second in prestige only to the European Cup.

The only other European competition at the time was the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup which was basically held to promote inter-city trade fairs and involved the clubs from those cities that held those fairs and had no relevance to league positions. The Fairs Cup would eventually be rebranded as the UEFA Cup in 1971, but was still considered inferior to the Cup Winners Cup.

The first edition of the Cup Winners’ Cup was held in 1961 with a lot of national federations unenthusiastic about the competition. Many of UEFA’s member associations did not have domestic cup competitions, and even those who did, considered them to be significantly lower in prestige.

However, the success of the European Cup that was started just five years back and the continuing popularity of the Fairs Cup forced UEFA’s hand and a semi-official pilot tournament was started in the 1960-61 season.

Many domestic cup winners turned down invitations to participate, taking the view that the competition would not be serious enough, including Copa del Rey winners Atletico Madrid and French Cup winners Monaco.

In the end, only 10 teams competed which nevertheless included the FA Cup winners Wolverhampton Wanderers and the DFB Pokal winners Borussia Monchengladbach. Several nations sent the league runners-up to take part.

The competition officially kicked off on 1st August 1960, when Scottish side Rangers took on Ferencvaros and Vorwats Berlin from East Germany entertained Czech side Ruda Hvezda Brno in the preliminary round.

Rangers quickly became favourites for the tournament, especially after an 11-0 demolition of Monchengladbach over two legs in the quarter-finals, which featured an 8-0 drubbing at Ibrox. However, they ran into a strong Fiorentina side in the final and the club from Florence took home the trophy after beating the Glaswegians over two legs.

Luigi Milan’s double would spell the end for Rangers in a 2-0 defeat at Ibrox before La Viola finished off the job with a 2-1 victory at Florence’s Stadio Comunale to become the inaugural champions.

Rise in popularity

Sir Alex Ferguson coached Aberdeen to a win in the 1983 edition

The competition was highly successful and UEFA directly took over its running from the next season. All the eligible member nations sent their teams for the next edition of the tournament, with Atletico Madrid – who had refused to take part in the first edition – winning the competition in 1962 at the expense of defending champions Fiorentina.

The popularity of the competition was so high that all UEFA member nations would establish a domestic cup tournament by 1968 in order to gain eligibility to compete in the tournament. The competition proper would eventually feature 32 teams, strictly one from each country and the final would be a one-off affair.

Tottenham would become the first English side to win the competition in 1963 and West Ham would follow suit a couple of years later. Barcelona would become the most successful team in the competition, winning the title four times and reaching the final twice more.

The tournament also threw up surprising winners along the way, not least the Belgian side Mechelen who would win the competition in 1988 over the mighty Ajax of Amsterdam. Dinamo Tbilisi and Slovan Bratislava would also win the title and the competition also witnessed the historic achievement of Magdeburg in 1974 when they became the first and only East German side to win a European trophy by defeating A.C. Milan in the final.

The most famous final of the competition, at least for British fans, would be the 1983 edition when Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen stunned Real Madrid 2-1 in the final. Arsenal would also cough up a title win at the tournament in 1994, the club’s only ever European triumph other than the Fairs Cup victory of 1970.

Downfall and eventual demise

Lazio won the final edition of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1999

Despite the incredible success over the couple of decades since its inception, the aura of the Cup Winners Cup had started to fade. With UEFA expanding the Champions League to have more than one entrant for higher ranked associations, many clubs who would have otherwise qualified for the Winners’ Cup due to their status as domestic cup winners would go on to the Champions League owing to their league positions.

For example, defending champions Barcelona would have been eligible for the Cup Winners Cup in 1998 owing to them winning the Copa del Rey in that season, but the Catalans entered the Champions League courtesy their second place finish in the league. Notable sides like PSV Eindhoven and Bayern Munich would find themselves in the same position, reducing the prestige of the competition further.

The late nineties would effectively see the competition being considered as a second rate competition with just one or two big names featuring every year. UEFA considered expanding the competition to 64 teams to allow a second team to enter from each country, although it was apparent that the Cup Winners’ Cup had weakened considerably, with the UEFA Cup overtaking the competition in prestige as well as popularity.

Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, UEFA decided that the 1998-99 competition would be the last in its illustrious history and that the tournament would be absorbed into the UEFA Cup from the following season.

Perhaps as a symbol of the competition’s fortunes, Coppa Italia champions Lazio took on Barcelona’s replacement for the tournament – Mallorca (1997 Copa del Rey runners-up) in the final held at Aston Villa’s Villa Park stadium in 1999.

Sven Goran Eriksson’s Biancocelesti would symbolically bring the trophy back to the country which produced the inaugural winner as the Italians came out on top 2-1. Pavel Nedved would score the final goal in the tournament’s near 40-year history as his 81st-minute winner ensured a fitting climax to an entertaining match.

The original Cup Winners Cup resides in the UEFA headquarters nowadays, harking back to those glory days of the 60s and 70s when the competition revelled in its global appeal.