The UEFA Champions league at its inception was known as the European Champions Club's Cup .It was launched one month after UEFA'S first congress which was held in Viennaon 2nd of March 1955.But funny enough it was not an UEFA initiative. The reason is this , the founding members of UEFA were mainly interested in organising a well established European national team competition.
But the French sports daily L'Equipe with their then-editor named Gabriel Hanot were championing the cause for a European club competiton that will bring together all the clubs in Europe. Then Gabriel Hanot together with his colleague Jacques Ferran designed a blueprint for a European challenge tournament. The tournament was to be played on wednessdays under floodlights. Thus the first major European football tournament was initiated by the French daily L'Equipe.
L'Equipe started the European Champions Club's Cup by inviting teams that they thought had the most fan appeal. To do this representatives of 16 clubs were invited to meetings on 2nd and 3rd of April 1955 where the L'Equipe rules were approved. Then the first European Club'Cup fixture was played in Lisbon between Partizan Belgrade of Yugoslavia and Sporting Clube de Portugal which ended 3-3. The Yugoslavian side won the return 5-2 to advance to the next stage.
To the long story short Real Madrid won the first competition and this competion developed into UEFA's major club tournament. The major turning point to the competition came in the 1992/93 season when the competition was renamed the UEFA Champions League with the format of the competion changed. Then the group stage was introduced into the competition and added to the traditional knockout elements.
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