European Championship - football tournament European Championship, formally UEFA European Championship , also called Euro, in football (soc...
European Championship - football tournament
European Championship, formally UEFA European Championship, also called Euro, in football (soccer), a quadrennial tournament held between the member countries of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The European Championship is second in prestige to the World Cup among international football tournaments.
The first final of the European Championship (then known as the European Nations’ Cup) took place in 1960 after two years of preliminary contests between 17 national football clubs. In 1960 the Euro final tournament consisted of four teams, but it expanded to eight teams in 1980 and 16 teams in 1996. Currently, qualification for a European Championship begins two years before the scheduled final when all members of UEFA begin playing among themselves to earn a berth in the 16-team tournament (the qualification process does not include the host country or countries, which automatically qualify for the final).
World Cup:
World Cup, formally FIFA World Cup, in football (soccer), quadrennial tournament that determines the sport’s world champion. It is likely the most popular sporting event in the world, drawing billions of television viewers every tournament.
The first competition for the cup was organized in 1930 by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and was won by Uruguay. Held every four years since that time, except during World War II, the competition consists of international sectional tournaments leading to a final elimination event made up of 32 national teams. Unlike Olympic football, World Cup teams are not limited to players of a certain age or amateur status, so the competition serves more nearly as a contest between the world’s best players. Referees are selected from lists that are submitted by all the national associations.
The trophy cup awarded from 1930 to 1970 was the Jules Rimet Trophy, named for the Frenchman who proposed the tournament. This cup was permanently awarded in 1970 to then three-time winner Brazil (1958, 1962, and 1970), and a new trophy called the FIFA World Cup was put up for competition. Many other sports have organized “World Cup” competitions.
Manchester United:
Manchester United, in full Manchester United Football Club, also called Manchester United FC, bynames Man U and the Red Devils, English professional football (soccer) team based in Manchester, England. Nicknamed “the Red Devils” for its distinctive red jerseys, it is one of the richest and best-supported football clubs not only in England but in the entire world. The club has won the English top-division league championship a record 20 times and the Football Association (FA) Cup 12 times.
The club was formed as Newton Heath LYR in 1878 by workers from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Renamed Manchester United in 1902, the club won its first English league championship in 1907–08. In 1910 the club moved from its old Bank Street ground into Old Trafford stadium, which has served as the team’s home ever since.
Manchester United’s history since World War II has been dominated by two long-serving managers. Sir Matthew Busby was appointed manager in 1945 and over the next 24 years steered the club to five English league and two FA Cup victories. The club had to contend with tragedy in 1958 when an aircraft carrying the team crashed in Munich, killing 23 of the 44 onboard. In the 1960s the team, rebuilt by Busby, included the highly talented attacking trio of Bobby Charlton, George Best, and Denis Law. In 1968 this team became the first English club to win the European Cup (now known as the Champions League) with a 4–1 victory over Benfica of Portugal in the final.
The former coach of the Scottish team Aberdeen, Alex Ferguson, managed the club from 1986 to 2013 and presided over an unparalleled spell of dominance in the English league. Manchester United has won 12 Premier League titles since that league’s inaugural season in 1992–93. In the 1998–99 season the club secured the first “treble” in English football history by winning the Premier League, the FA Cup, and the Champions League. A second Champions League victory came in the 2007–08 season.
Manchester United is renowned for its youth team program, which has generated many notable homegrown players who later performed for the club’s first team, including David Beckham. The club has also brought in a number of major transfer signings over the years, such as Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Andy Cole, Roy Keane, Eric Cantona, Patrice Evra, Dimitar Berbatov, and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Olympique de Marseille:
Established as a general sports club that originally focused on rugby, Olympique de Marseille won the first of 10 French Cup trophies in 1924 and its first French top-division (known as Ligue 1) championship in the 1936–37 season. Relegated from Ligue 1 in 1959, the club arguably reached its lowest point when just 434 spectators attended an April 1965 match against Forbach. A change of fortunes in the early 1970s saw the club win two consecutive league titles. The first of these came during the 1970–71 season, propelled by Croatian forward Josip Skoblar, whose 44 goals that season remain a French league record.
A flurry of spending by club chairman Bernard Tapie in the mid-1980s brought world-class footballers such as Didier Deschamps, Enzo Francescoli, Eric Cantona, and Jean-Pierre Papin to Marseille. The team responded by winning five consecutive Ligue 1 titles (1988–89 to 1992–93). It also reached the semifinals of the European Cup in 1990, was runner-up in 1991, and in 1993 defeated AC Milan 1–0 to become the first French team to win the Champions League (as the European Cup has been known since 1992). However, after the team was later found guilty in a match-fixing scandal, its chairman was imprisoned, and the club was stripped of its 1992–93 Ligue 1 title. Relegation to the second division followed the next year, but Olympique de Marseille quickly returned to the top flight. The club underwent a major revival with finishes near the top of the Ligue 1 table between 2006–07 and 2008–09, which led to another top-division championship in 2009–10.
Africa Cup of Nations:
Africa Cup of Nations, also called African Cup of Nations and African Nations Cup, the most prestigious football (soccer) competition in Africa. It is contested by national teams and is organized by the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF). The competition’s format has changed over time, with the number of teams increasing from 3 in 1957 to, after several expansions, 24 in 2019. Growing participation also led to the introduction of qualifying rounds in 1968, the same year that CAF decided to hold the tournament biennially.
The Africa Cup of Nations was first held in February 1957 in Khartoum, Sudan, where Egypt defeated the host nation in the final to win the Abdel Aziz Abdallah Salem Trophy, named after its donor, an Egyptian who was the first CAF president. That trophy was permanently awarded to Ghana in 1978 when it became the first country to win the tournament three times. The next trophy, known as the African Unity Cup, was awarded permanently to Cameroon in 2000 when that team claimed its third championship since 1978. In 2002 a new trophy called the Cup of Nations was introduced.
The competition has served as a showcase for the talents of African players. In the 1950s and ’60s the tournament’s attacking, entertaining style of play seized the imagination of African fans and attracted European talent scouts, agents, and journalists. Under the leadership of Ethiopian Ydnekachew Tessema, CAF president from 1972 until his death in 1987, the cup earned greater international prestige. Professionalism was allowed in 1980 and corporate sponsorships accepted in 1984. Among the cup’s greatest performers are Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, who holds the record for most career goals scored in the Cup of Nations (18), and Ivorian striker Laurent Pokou, who tallied five goals in a 6–1 victory over Ethiopia in 1970.
Beyond the boundaries of the playing fields, the Cup of Nations has been a conduit for the articulation of political values and ideas. Having inherited colonial institutions devoid of indigenous symbols of national identity, many independent African governments invested considerable economic and political capital into national football teams in order to elicit pride and build unity among their diverse populations. For example, with the enthusiastic support of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won the cup in 1963 and 1965. In winning the 1996 tournament at home, South Africa’s racially mixed team seemed to symbolize football’s power to bridge the gaping social and economic inequalities left by apartheid. In contrast, the Algerian government was unable to capitalize on Algeria’s victory in the 1990 Cup of Nations, as fans celebrated the team’s triumph in Algiers by chanting their support for the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. Political tensions violently disrupted the Cup of Nations in 2010: the Togo team bus was attacked by separatist gunmen as it traveled into the Angolan exclave of Cabinda on its way to the tournament; two team officials and the bus driver were killed in the attack, and the Togolese team withdrew from the 2010 Cup of Nations, which was held with 15-team field.
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