Champions League Tickets

Champions League
Organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) since 1955 for the most successful football clubs in Europe, The UEFA Champions League (also known as the European Cup, UCL, CE1, C1 [1] or CL) is a seasonal club football competition. The prize, the European Champion Clubs' Cup, is considered the most prestigious club trophy in the sport.

The tournament consists of several stages and begins with three preliminary knockout qualifying rounds. The sixteen teams emerging from the preliminary rounds take part in the final knock-out stage, which starts in late February and ends with the final match in May. The tournament was inaugurated in 1955, at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L'?quipe Gabriel Hanot, as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Clubs' Cup or the European Cup.

The competition began in 1955/56 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. This qualification system continued until 1992.

In the 1992?93 season, the tournament was renamed to UEFA Champions League and eligibility was expanded to include not just domestic champions but also the best performing runners up according to UEFA's coefficient ranking list. In UEFA's coefficient system, a team finishing second in the Spanish La Liga would be more deserving of an automatic place in the Champions League than a team finishing first in, for example, Polish Orange Ekstraklasa. As a result, the system was restructured to force "weaker" national champions to qualify for the group stages, while other, "stronger" national runners-up would automatically get places.

The tournament consists of several stages and begins with three preliminary knockout qualifying rounds. Different teams start in different rounds, according to their position in domestic league and the UEFA coefficients of their league, while the sixteen top ranked teams spread across the biggest domestic leagues qualify directly.

In the subsequent preliminary round, participating teams are paired, with aggregate winners proceeding into the next round. Qualifying rounds span from mid-July to late August. The losers of the third qualifying round are transferred to the UEFA Cup, while the sixteen winners of the final qualifying round are joined by the sixteen teams who have qualified directly, to participate in the group stage.

Teams are drawn into eight groups of four teams, each team playing every other team in the group twice (home and away). The group stage is played between mid-September and early December. The teams finishing third in their groups are transferred to the UEFA Cup, while the top two teams from every group qualify for the next round. Here the sixteen remaining teams take part in the knock-out stage, which starts in late February and ends with the final match in May.

All qualifying rounds and knock-out ties are two-legged, with each team hosting one match. The team which scores the greater aggregate number of goals qualifies for the next round. The away goals rule applies. Extra time and penalty kicks are used to determine the winner, if necessary. An exception is the final, which is a single match played at a predetermined venue.

UEFA Champions League is a highly profitable competition for the clubs that reach the group stage. UEFA estimates the amount of money to be given to the 32 participants of the 2005/06 group stage at ?430 million. Clubs make additional money from ticket sales, corporate hospitality, merchandising and so on.

The UEFA Champions League Anthem, officially titled simply as "Champions League", is an arrangement by Tony Britten of Georg Frideric Handel's "Zadok the Priest" from the Coronation Anthems. UEFA commissioned Britten in 1992 to arrange their hymn, and the piece was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and sung by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chorus in the three official languages used by UEFA: English, German, and French. The hymn's chorus is played before each UEFA Champions League game, as well as at the beginning and end of television broadcasts of the matches.

The current holders of the UEFA Champions League trophy are AC Milan, who beat Liverpool FC 2-1 at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece on 23 May 2007. Moscow will host its first European Cup final for the 2007-08 season.