The Contribution of Real Madrid’s First Five European Cups to the Emergence of a Common Football Space

Real Madrid won the first five tournaments of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup (now formally known as the UEFA Champions League and to which we will refer hereinafter as the European Cup) between 1956 and 1960, contributing decisively to the competition’s consolidation. The tournament’s history started towards the end of 1954, when a journalist of the French sports daily L’Equipe, Gabriel Hanot, published an article arguing for the need to organise a competition that could bring together the champions of every European league. However, this was not an original proposal. Thirty years before Hanot’s article, proposals for such a football competition were circulated among the game’s ruling elite. Unfortunately, at that time the lack of a good transport infrastructure to travel through Europe discouraged the proposers, who instead turned their attention to regional supranational competitions, such as the Mitropa Cup or the Latin Cup.