“You cannot plan for the Champions League: the competitors are always overwhelming. It is a big new challenge every year.” - Thomas Muller
On this day in 1954, in Basel, Switzerland, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) was founded. It is one of the six continental bodies of the world’s football governing organisation, FIFA, and is responsible for the execution of competitions such as the UEFA European Championship, the UEFA Nations League, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League and Super Cup.
The body consists of 55 members and includes the world’s best domestic club competitions such as the Premier League, the La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga and Ligue One. The leagues are home to monumental names like Liverpool, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, and Bayern Munich and are also home to football’s biggest stars in the form of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The highly revered UEFA Champions League is only second to the FIFA World Cup in terms of its magnitude. The competition’s most successful team is Real Madrid with 13 titles, with the current holder’s being Liverpool who stand at 6. The competitions garner viewership numbers as high as 11.3 million across its digital platforms and their impact reaches across the world.
