European Cup Trivia

[Alex Anderson]

Are Forest and Villa also the only champions who have only appeared in the EC/CL in the years they won it or were defending champions?

Hell of a spot. Must be I suppose.

Wait ... yup - I've had a think about it - they definitely are.

Feyenoord, Porto, PSV Eindhoven and Red Star Belgrade are, in fact, the only other clubs to win the competition without having actually lost the final before or since (with at least one of those final losses coming not as defending champs*).

And we can all immediately think of at least one match - usually a famous one too - each of these played in the ECCC/UCL in a season other than their competition-winning or title-defending seasons. (we're all struggling to think of a season in which Porto didn't play in the Champions League)

*Ajax's only final loss, in 1996, came as defending champions but, off the top of my head, I remember Celtic beating them in the early 80's, in the middle of their 22-year final hiatus.

So who would get the invitations if UEFA had a sponsored brainwave after a liquid lunch, and inaugurated a competition to be entered by ONE club from each country/league (don't pedant that, it's got old), the only criteria being ... have never played in the EC/CL, but are the next cab off the rank?

This is such a beautiful question I might have to ignore it.

Already lost a week on this thread - sometime around September (this year?) - discussing who the next cab off the rank should be in terms of winning the EC/UCL itself (It's Rangers, it's Rangers, it's Rangers for me - but Valencia or Atletico Madrid for anyone not riddled with cancerous sectarian bigotry).

And I've spent the entire morning so far thinking of just Scotland's nomination for this one.

The fact they've hosted it three times might be reward enough for Queen's Park but their lack of a single national league title is drowned out by their colossal contribution to the Scottish, British and international game (Christ, they practically invented international football!) and only the fact they eschewed the professional game - of which the ECCC/UCL is the zenith - is allowing me to be more rational in first considering the Scottish teams who won their only league title/s in the years before the competition was around:

Hibs were the last and sorted that problem out by having their chairman improperly insert them into the first ever edition of the European Cup (see Geoffrey's link, above).

Third Lanark are no longer with us, having been liquidated the year Celtic won the European Cup, winning their only Scottish title in 1904; Motherwell won theirs in 1932 and Dumbarton are the only multiple winner from entirely outwith the era of European competition (well, Hibs too but - yeah - see my last sentence). So, on a technical level, it should be the Sons of the Rock.

That's Dumbarton.

But then I think about their shitty little crowds today - since before the First World War, really - and have a real problem seeing Dumbarton as "first tier", ahead of that cadre of solid, characterful, classic Scottish clubs who've done everything but win the national title: St Mirren, Airdrie, Morton, Falkirk, Dunfermline - from further afar you have East Fife and from too recently you have Inverness and St Johnstone. Scottish Cup-winners is what I'm saying. Clyde! - ahhh - the Bully Wee. Partick Thistle can go fuck themselves - they're too "ironic" to win a Champions League.

Basically, the answer should be Hibs - but Harry Swan already made this wish come true for them. So I have to say Queen's Park for symbolism and most Scottish Cups outwith the Old Firm, Dumbarton for most league titles and St Mirren for most Scottish Cups in the professional era.

But, with St Miren's first Scottish Cup coming in the 1920's, Falkirk and Dunfermline have won as many in the actual era of the European Cup/UCL ... and reached more finals overall.

Yeah - it's the parameters. That's the problem/fun, with these "what if" questions - deciding the criteria.

For Scotland I nominate St Mirren. Just feels right.

[Alex Anderson]

QPR for 1976

or Sunderland or Sheffield Wednesday for size, history and league titles won in the pre-ECCC/UCL era.

Huddersfield and Burnely might want to argue.

But I'm ignoring this question ... don't have the time ...

[seand]

I'm putting Bray (2 FAI Cups, long run in the Premier) into a playoff against Galway (1 FAI Cup, 3 euro outings)
Has to be Ballymena United from the occupied territories.
Southampton
Tromso
er, Fylkir
I'm nominating St Johnstone - how many times have they played in Europe already?
Sochaux
Hannover
Diosgyor
Atalanta
Espanol
Bala Town

Espanol are the standout aren't they?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Burnley did play in the European Cup, in 1960-61. Beat Stade de Reims before going out to Hamburg 5-4 on aggregate.

[Alex Anderson]

Oh for fucksakes, Alex - of course they did. Cheers Rogin. And Huddersfield before too long ...




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[tee rex]

If we apply current rules retrospectively, awarding a place to the winners of the Europa League and its predecessors, then clubs like West Ham (winners) and Bastia (runners-up) can stake a claim.

But anyway, the main point is to discover how many clubs wouldn't be eligible because they did play in the European Cup, allowing a satisfying "I never knew that". Like Dundee. Nailed on, I'd have guessed. But they qualified, and weren't even second.


(apologies to all Dundee fans and historians for my ignorance ...)

(edit: forgetfulness more than ignorance. In fact, I've probably asked the same trivia question about them every couple of years ...)

[Snake Plissken]

Burnley did play in the European Cup, in 1960-61. Beat Stade de Reims before going out to Hamburg 5-4 on aggregate.

You bastard. The one thing I knew in this thread and I'm out by 26 minutes.

[Satchmo Distel]

Do countries like Wales, who only developed a league in the 90s or later, get to send a team? Cardiff as FA Cup winners, Swansea for being very good in the late 70s?

[seand]

Cardiff and Swansea made their Sassannach beds....

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I’m confused, because Di Stéfano scored in all of Madrid’s first five victories.

Kev means 3 or more because Di Stefano is the answer.

"My bad" as you lot say and us lot now say because of you uncouth lot, I got that one wrong then (I should have checked more thoroughly but couldn't be arsed so I blinded trusted my player instead, which of course I should never ever have done as he is one heck of a... well, more on this below). Or rather, my player got that one wrong I should say which is far more worrying as he therefore truly believes that he was the first one to achieve that before Ronaldo (supposedly) pegged him back last May.

I don’t particularly like him for what he did to my team – the underhand way he did it – so I have a good mind to write to him and tell him that he NEVER FUCKING WAS THE ONLY PLAYER TO HAVE SCORED IN 3 DIFFERENT C1 CUPS before or after or during Cristiano Ronaldo so he can jolly well stop blowing his own Trompete about his non-existent friggin record that never fucking was one in the first fucking place and rot in hell.

Other possibility: the translator cocked up. I dislike this hypothesis immensely as it would exonerate said player from any wicked wrongdoing, and I happen to think that he is well suited to such acts of devious gamesmanship (if I ever were to write a football pantomime, he would defo be my villain), but very unfortunately I have to give it high consideration as mistranslations are so frequent nowadays. The interview I read was translated into French and well, newspapers/mags/the media these days are far more likely to use (as makeshift translators) interns/youngsters on a work experience and who happen to have a GCSE in a foreign language (any language will do, they're more or less the same, aren't they?) rather than a proper translator*. I must say, he is not the obvious candidate for such a "record", or near record as it were.

It should therefore have read something like that (a bit of a fudge but there you are, you can blame the sly bastard) =>

With the negligible exception of Di Stéfano, and Cristiano Ronaldo (in 2017), who was the only player to have scored in 3 different C1 cup finals?




[*I’ll give you the short sentence in French afterwards, with the corresponding link, so you can see I'm acting in good faith unlike the shyster we're dealing with]

[Satchmo Distel]

Not Thierry Henry?

[Alex Anderson]

You bastard. The one thing I knew in this thread and I'm out by 26 minutes.

Stand by your buzzer, Snake. I throw out one of those per post ...

[Alex Anderson]

Genoa per l'Italia.

[Alex Anderson]

SpVgg Greuther Fürth, für Deutschland - sod the mergers and gawn the Shamrocks!

And I'll chuck in First Vienna für Österreich.

You can see my bias here: Won most national titles outwith the era of European football (and aren't Dumbarton or Partick Thistle). But First Vienna's case is particularly pertinent: The reverse of the Hibernian scenario - the last of their league titles should have seen them qualify for the first ever European Cup but Rapid took their place.

Also a big name in the Mitropa Cup days.

[ursus arctos]

Espanyol are the standouts if one focuses on performances in other European competitions (two lost UEFA Cup finals), but if you look at overall domestic performances, it is going to be clubs that once dominated their domestic leagues like Genoa and First Vienna.

Espanyol have no Spanish titles, Genoa have nine Italian championships, First Vienna have six Austrian titles.

Their French equivalent would be Racing Club de Roubaix, with five titles, though they no longer exist.

[Kevin S]

Genoa per l'Italia.

Nailed on. Have Pro Vercelli in reserve if Genoa get cold feet. Got to feel a bit sorry for Bologna though, too. Their one campaign ended in the preliminary round on a coin toss.

[seand]

I think we've stumbled into the next question. ... European club with the most league titles without participating in EC -- CL. Starting the bidding with Genoa on 9

[ad hoc]

That's going to be some Eastern European capital city club which got dissolved by the communists (like Venus Bucharest - 8 titles)

[Southport Zeb]

Prince of Wales - 19 Gibralterean titles, the last of which came a couple of years before the start of the European Cup and sixty before Gibralter's champions were eligible.

[ursus arctos]

That is going to be very hard to beat.

A pedant suggests that referring to “League” titles in this context is problematic, as proper national leagues were relatively late to appear in most European countries, with the Champions usually being determined by some kind of competition among regional champions.

All of Genoa’s titles predate Serie A.

[ad hoc]

This thread seems to have spawned a potential WSC article for the future. Except that it is on which is the biggest English team never to have played in any of the three major European competitions. Current leaders are Sheffield Utd and Crystal Palace.

And Huddersfield

[ursus arctos]

I’d go for Huddersfield

[ursus arctos]

Pogoń Lwów for Poland

Four national championships before the City was lost to the USSR.

[seand]

The now departed Belfast Celtic have 14 titles in the bag

[seand]

Time to (almost) polish off the never-champions in the EC/CL thing.



The early seasons of the EC (i.e. the 1950s) were not strictly restricted to champions, though it quickly moved in that direction. We dealt with the 9 out 16 non-champions in the first edition.

1956-57

22 participants, 20 national champions, Real as holders, and one non-champion, drumroll please for (then) never-champions Galatasaray, champions of the Istanbul football league, in the absence of a national competition. Besiktas’s 56-7 title is now recognised as the first national title and Gala never won the unofficial Turkish championship which ran between the 20s and 40s. (I await the opprobrium of our Turkish correspondents for misrepresenting this factoid.)



1957-58

24 participants, 22 champions, 2 non-champions. Real qualified as holders and Spanish champions so Spanish runners-up Sevilla were invited. Never-champions Gwardia Warsaw were back as Polish representatives despite Legia’s title win.



1958-59

26 participants*, 23 champions, 3 non-champions, Real as holders and champions so runners-up Atletico Madrid got a spin. With Denmark transitioning from a winter season to a summer one the 1958 championship was ongoing, so KB were nominated (despite finishing midtable in 1956-57 and 1958.)

Poland nominated sixth-placed Polonia Bytom at the expense of champions Gornik Zabrze. Ah, Gornik Zabrze, if ever there was a name for a ‘crack Eastern European outfit’ it’s Gornik Zabrze.

*Olympiacos also qualified but got all political on it and withdrew when drawn to play Turkish champions Besiktas.

*Manchester United were also invited to enter the season after Munich, but declined.



Looks like champions/holders only from 1959-60 til the CL-era. BUT…. But, but, but there’s always an exception isn’t there? Another anomaly….. a club who played one season in the European Cup in the mid 80s. When they played their matches they were not national champions and they would not win a national championship until the 90s- in a different country. I leave that one to mull over for a little while.