The union des Associations Européennes de Football – UEFA – was founded in the Swiss city of Basle on 15th June 1954. The organization was the brainchild of Frenchman Henri Delaunay (who was appointed the first general secretary), and set up with the help of Ottorino Barassi, the Italian vice-president of FIFA and the Belgian José Crahay. The trio wanted to create an umbrella organization to preside over European football, working as a confederation of FIFA and promoting and developing the game within the continent. Delaunay had been keen on the idea for some years; he had been pushing for a cup competition for European clubs as far back as the late 1920s (he also had plans for a European nations tournament).
FIFA had been in existence exactly 50 years before the Europeans finally got together (the South Americans had formed the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol in 1916). Things moved quickly: within a year the first European Champion Clubs’ Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the forerunners of the Champions; League and UEFA Cup, were up and running. Sadly, Delaunay wasn’t around to see his long-cherished vision take shape. The Frenchman died within a year of the opening of UEFA’s original offices. Delaunay’s son Pierre took over, retiring at the end of the decade.
Delaunay junior, combining his new role with that of general secretary of the French FA, had teamed up with Gabriel Hanot, editor of sports paper L’Équipe, to sell the idea of club competitions among the 25 national associates then under UEFA’s wing. The number has since increased to 52. Most were enthusiastic about the idea – some, however, were not.
The English FA in particular reacted to the French with haughty disdain, unhappy at the thought that their standing as founders of the modern game stood to be undermined (FIFA received similar short shrift in its formative years). The 1955 League Champions Chelsea were advised not to take part in the inaugural tournament; Matt Busby’s Manchester United, similarly expected to refuse UEFA’s invitation the following year, famously went against the FA’s wishes, becoming the first English club to enter the competition.
In 1958 qualification rounds for the first European Nations’ Cup got underway. The finals would be held in France in 1960 (and the trophy itself named after Henri Delaunay). Just 17 teams took part but the tournament grew in stature – and size – as the decade wore on. The club competitions and gifts it created caught the imagination from the off; the European Cup, as it was now known, enjoying something of a golden age in the 1960s and 1970s, with the successes of Celtic and Manchester United cementing its appeal in the once sceptical Home Nations, and making the FA’s previous reluctance to get involved look even more blinkered.
Clubs like Ajax, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and Milan became household names. European nights were glamorous, exciting and different. UEFA went through the 1980s and into the 1990s with high hopes, presided over by the Arsenal-supporting Swedish president Lennart Johansson, who fought his corner in a series of disputes with FIFA president Sepp Blatter (Johansson is also vice-president of the international federation).
But UEFA now enjoys an uneasy relationship with the larger European clubs, torn as it is between the need to promote the best of the continent, and a duty to protect the wishes of other members. Things were thrown into sharp relief in the early 1990s with the formation of G14, a lobby group representing clubs keen to maximize revenue from broadcasting rights, and instrumental in the formation of the Champions’ League (having grown impatient at UEFA’s heel-dragging over the mini-league format).
At the same time, UEFA found itself caught up in a succession of court cases, as Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman sought to use European Union employment legislation to become a free agent allowing him to move to a club once his contract was up without the need for a transfer fee. Bosman won, catching a complacent UEFA on the hop and adding another serious dent in the organization’s credibility.
Recent proposals, like the mandatory inclusion of four home-grown players in every squad, have rattled G14 further, and look set to incur the disapproval of EU law lords once again. If anything, UEFA has become something of a victim of its own success; the wealth and power of European clubs has grown to such an extent that they now pose a very real threat to the organization’s authority. Having come so far in such a relatively short space of time , the next few years could prove crucial to the UEFA; in danger of looking increasingly toothless, it has to keep in check the more excessive tendencies of the G14 members if it is to continue to govern the European game.
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