Madrid final will be the greatest show on turf

From the European Cup of the Di Stefano and Puskas era to the Champions League of today, Andy Mitten looks back through the decades to tell the story of football's greatest club competition.

Alfredo De Stefano, right, scores for Real Madrid in their 7-3 victory over Eintracht in the 1960 European Cup final in Glasgow.

When Bayern Munich and Inter Milan walk out on to the lush green turf tomorrow night for the Champions League final, they will be doing so at the home of the club that won the competition in each of its first five years, Real Madrid. The European Cup was the brainchild of Gabriel Hanot, a French journalist who persuaded Uefa to organise the first competition in 1955-56. Not everybody was convinced by the idea, with England football authorities adopting an arrogant and isolationist stance, refusing to allow clubs to take part.

Tomorrow's game will be seen by 70,000 people in the Bernabeu, plus a worldwide television audience exceeding 100 million, making it the second most watched annual single sport event on the planet, with more viewers than the Super Bowl. Real remain the competition's most successful club with nine victories, but the European Cup is unrecognisable from the days when Ferenc Puskas, Alfredo Di Stefano, Hector Rial, Paco Gento, et al ruled European football.

A total of 77 teams entered the Champions League this season, compared with the 16 who contested the original version 55 years ago. The European Cup was a straight knock-out over two legs, a format that remained unchanged until 1991. Then, opponents were virtually unknown, tactics varied as much as the pitches and dark stories persisted about referees being bribed and visitors' food being tampered with. Real's brilliance overcame such obstacles, though their dominance ceased when Benfica, the Portuguese giants, won the competition twice in succession in the early 1960s.

AC Milan became the first Italian European champions in 1963, before their neighbours Inter won the competition twice in the following years. Celtic were the first British club to win the cup in 1967. In a far cry from today's globally sourced teams, all 11 Celtic players were born within 30 miles of their Parkhead ground in Glasgow. Manchester United were the first English winners of the trophy the following year, while the total football introduced by Rinus Michels meant the Ajax Amsterdam of Johan Cruyff won the competition three times in succession in 1970, '72 and '73. Bayern Munich emulated this with a hat-trick of victories, before Liverpool began an English dominance with four triumphs in eight years.

The final matches of the old-style tournament were seldom televised outside of the competing nations. Change was demanded and the Champions League was initiated in 1992 because of money. Leading European clubs felt they were getting little value from European competition. The knockout format of the European Cup was too risky for clubs who invested heavily in their squads. The choice of final venues was baffling, unfair and omitted the best stadiums. Vienna staged three finals in eight years between 1987 and 1995.

Clubs also thought that television revenues were not being maximised. There were other issues. With the Heysel disaster of 1985 (where 39 people, mostly Juventus fans, died as a result of rioting with Liverpool supporters at the European Cup final) still fresh in the memory, the image of the competition had been damaged. Clubs frequently enjoyed better attendances for league games than for premium European Cup ties.

Uefa were stung into action before somebody else made far reaching proposals. "Manchester United's relationship with Uefa used to be non-existent," a United director said. "They viewed English clubs dimly for the hooliganism which had led to their five year ban from European competition in the 1980s. And then the Champions League started. Uefa's attitude to us changed completely. They realised they had to court us and treat us properly. Why? Because it was the big clubs who had the power, not the administrators."

The clubs formalised that relationship when they started the G14 lobby group of leading teams - a group of which Uefa were always suspicious. Those suspicions proved correct. The Champions League was launched for the 1992/93 season and the glamour was not immediately obvious. Only league champions were allowed to enter and clubs had to battle through up to four rounds to reach one of two four-team groups, the winners of which went straight to the final. Marseille and Milan battled through, the former becoming the first and only French side to triumph, though their win was blighted by the fact that they were relegated from their domestic league for match fixing.

Modifications were made to the format the following season, with semi-finals taking place after the group stage - a round English champions Manchester United did not qualify for as they were eliminated earlier by the unfancied Turkish side Galatasaray. The big clubs wanted yet more guarantees, though two of them still progressed to the final, with Milan beating Barcelona 4-0 in Athens in a contest so one-sided it served only to illustrate their dominance.

Some leading lights were unhappy and demanded more games to generate more money. Media Partners, a pan-European group funded by Silvio Berlusconi, pushed for a version of a new European Super League which would provide these extra money-spinning matches. The plans were bold. Non-champions could qualify, an expansionist policy which appalled the puritans. The clubs liked the idea, but were reluctant to leave Uefa.

The Champions League had come too far to change hands. The marketing worked, the clear and distinctive branding appealed to multinational advertisers. The anthem before the match was popular, the grandiose tune setting the scene for some of the biggest matches in world football. Uefa were inevitably coerced into change and runners-up from Europe's biggest leagues were allowed to enter the competition. Manchester United thus became the first non-domestic champions to win the European Cup in 1999, in one of the tournament's great comebacks. Trailing Bayern Munich with a minute remaining, Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored in a dramatic finish.

Before that season, United had never played Bayern Munich and clubs who had gone decades without meeting were clashing with far more regularity. The club owners had argued, rightly, that the best players deserved to be pitted against the best on a regular basis. A second group stage was introduced in 1999/00, bloating the competition further and leading to fresh criticism that the cash cow was being milked too much.

Cruyff claimed that the Champions League had become "decaffeinated" and, in keeping with the culinary theme, George Graham, the former Arsenal manager, said it had become "too à la carte." The second group stage was jettisoned in time for 2003-04 and the Champions League has found a successful status quo since. Now, the competition is viewed as the pinnacle of club football. Many big teams start the season aiming not to finish first, but in a Champions League qualification position, which means a top-four spot in the domestic leagues of the leading nations.

The lure of the financial rewards cannot be overstated. In season 2009-10, Uefa awarded ?5.4 million (Dh24.3m) for each of the 32 teams, divided into eight groups, who qualified. A win was worth ?800,000, a draw ?400,000. Quarter- finalists received an extra ?2.5m, semi-finalists another ?2.5m, with ?4m more for the runners-up and ?7 million for the winners. This does not include television money and match-day revenues which dwarf the prize money.

So rich is the competition that when clubs are eliminated, the headlines are not so much of a sporting nature, but a business one. When Liverpool, one of the few teams to regularly do better in the Champions League than their domestic league, failed to go beyond the group stage this season, analysts focused on the likely drop in revenue. Their failure to finish in the top four brought further negative headlines about their "£40 million (Dh212m) failure" - that is what a reasonable run in the competition is worth. At least Liverpool had enjoyed recent success - their 2005 comeback from three goals down against AC Milan to win the trophy in one of the great moments in sport.

Another English side, Leeds United, tried to reach for the stars. Semi-finalists in 2001, they borrowed heavily and geared themselves financially towards the pot of gold of Champions League qualification. It was a costly gamble and failure brought their house tumbling down. They achieved promotion to the Championship, English football's second tier, this season after three campaigns in League One.

The Champions League is far from perfect. Clubs from smaller nations have virtually no chance of winning, with teams from the Western European countries of England, Spain, Italy and Germany dominating. Only Porto, Marseille, Monaco and Ajax have won the trophy from outside of these nations and no team from Eastern Europe has won the competition in the Champions League format. Michel Platini, the Uefa president, has tried to redress some of the imbalances by giving teams from lesser footballing nations a better chance of reaching the lucrative group stage. He also wants to introduce stronger financial controls, citing that a club hundreds of millions in debt is not acting fairly.

Platini is well-intentioned, although he will be reluctant to change too much and the prospect of heavily indebted teams like United or Real not competing remains unrealistic, as clubs still hold the power. The competition is well positioned for the future. The excellence of the play means that players regularly claim the standard is superior to the World Cup finals. Pitches are uniformly perfect, referees largely consistent and the home advantage has diminished as teams are travelling far more frequently. And despite the changes, the prestige of being European champions is as high as ever, with the Champions League viewed as the greatest trophy in club football.