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UEFA

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Abbreviation
  
UEFA

Region served
  
Europe

Headquarters
  
Switzerland

UEFA httpslh6googleusercontentcomMcWupq8GGwwAAA

Formation
  
15 June 1954; 62 years ago (1954-06-15)

Membership
  
55 full member associations

Official language
  
French, English, German

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA, /juːˈfə/; French: Union Européenne de Football Association; German: Vereinigung Europäischer Fußballverbände) is the administrative body for association football in Europe, although several member states are primarily or entirely located in Asia. It is one of six continental confederations of world football's governing body FIFA. UEFA consists of 55 national association members.

Contents

UEFA represents the national football associations of Europe, runs nation and club competitions including the UEFA European Championship, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Super Cup, and controls the prize money, regulations, and media rights to those competitions.

Until 1959 the main headquarters were located in Paris, and later in Bern. In 1995, UEFA headquarters were transferred to Nyon, Switzerland. Henri Delaunay was the first general secretary and Ebbe Schwartz the first president. The current president is Aleksander Čeferin, a former Football Association of Slovenia president, who was elected as UEFA's seventh president at the 12th Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens in September 2016, and automatically became a vice-president of the world body FIFA.

Sigla uefa champions league


History and membership

UEFA was founded on 15 June 1954 in Basel, Switzerland after consultation between the Italian, French, and Belgian associations. The European football union began with 25 members; that number doubled by the early 1990s. UEFA membership coincides for the most part with recognition as a sovereign country in Europe, although there are some exceptions. Some states (Monaco and Vatican City) are not members. Some UEFA members are not sovereign states, but form part of a larger recognized sovereign state in the context of international law. These include Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, (Countries of the United Kingdom), Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory), the Faroe Islands (autonomous country within Denmark), and Kosovo (disputed territory and partially recognised state), however in the context of these countries government functions concerning sport tend to be carried at the territorial level coterminous with the UEFA member entity. Some UEFA members are transcontinental states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Russia). Countries which had been members of the Asian Football Confederation were also admitted to the European football association, particularly Israel and Kazakhstan. Additionally some UEFA member associations allow teams from outside their association's main territory to take part in their "domestic" competition. AS Monaco, for example, takes part in the French League (though a separate sovereign entity); Welsh clubs Cardiff City and Swansea City participate in the English League; Berwick Rangers, situated in England, play in the Scottish Professional Football League and Derry City, situated in Northern Ireland, play in the Republic of Ireland-based League of Ireland.

Former members

  • Saarland Football Union 1954–1956
  • German football association of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) 1954–1990
  • Football Federation of the Soviet Union 1954–1991, in 1992 became Russian Football Union. The newly independent 14 Soviet Republics created their own football associations, and they all became members of FIFA and UEFA or AFC.
  • Football Association of Yugoslavia 1954–1992, became Football Association of Serbia and Montenegro. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia became independent and created their own football associations.
  • Football Association of Serbia and Montenegro 1992–2006, became Football Association of Serbia. Montenegro, which became independent, created its own football association.
  • Competitions

    UEFA runs official international competitions in Europe and some countries of Northern, Southwestern and Central Asia for national teams and professional clubs, known as UEFA competitions, some of which are regarded as the world's most prestigious tournaments.

    International

    The main competition for men's national teams is the UEFA European Football Championship, started in 1958, with the first finals in 1960, and known as the European Nations Cup until 1964. It is also called UEFA or the EURO. UEFA also runs national competitions at Under-21, Under-19 and Under-17 levels. For women's national teams, UEFA operates the UEFA Women's Championship for senior national sides as well as Women's Under-19 and Women's Under-17 Championships.

    UEFA also organized the UEFA-CAF Meridian Cup with CAF for youth teams in an effort to boost youth football. UEFA launched the UEFA Regions' Cup, for semi-professional teams representing their local region, in 1999. In futsal there is the UEFA Futsal Championship and UEFA Futsal Under-21 Championship.

    The Italian, German, Spanish and French men's national teams are the sole teams to have won the European football championship in all categories.

    Club

    The top-ranked UEFA competition is the UEFA Champions League, which started in the 1992/93 season and gathers the top 1–4 teams of each country's league (the number of teams depend on that country's ranking and can be upgraded or downgraded); this competition was re-structured from a previous one that only gathered the top team of each country (held from 1955–92 and known as the European Champion Clubs' Cup or simply the European Cup).

    A second, lower-ranked competition is the UEFA Europa League. This competition, for national knockout cup winners and high-placed league teams, was launched by UEFA in 1971 as a successor of both the former UEFA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (also begun in 1955). A third competition, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, which had started in 1960, was absorbed into the UEFA Cup (now UEFA Europa League) in 1999.

    In women's football UEFA also conducts the UEFA Women's Champions League for club teams. The competition was first held in 2001, and known as the UEFA Women's Cup until 2009.

    The UEFA Super Cup pits the winners of the Champions League against the winners of the Europa League (previously the winners of the Cup Winners' Cup), and came into being in 1973.

    The UEFA Intertoto Cup was a summer competition, previously operated by several Central European football associations, which was relaunched and recognized as official UEFA club competition by UEFA in 1995. The last Intertoto Cup took place in 2008.

    The European/South American Cup was jointly organised with CONMEBOL between the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores winners.

    Only four teams (Juventus, Ajax, Bayern Munich and Chelsea) have won each of the three main competitions (European Cup/UEFA Champions League, European Cup Winners' Cup/UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League), a feat that is no longer possible for any team that did not win the Cup Winners' Cup. There are currently nine teams throughout Europe that have won two of the three trophies; all but one have won the Cup Winners' Cup, four require a win in the Champions League and five require a UEFA Europa League win.

    Juventus of Italy was the first team in Europe—remaining the only one to date (2015)—to win all UEFA's official championships and cups and, in commemoration of achieving that feat, have received The UEFA Plaque by the Union of European Football Associations on 12 July 1988.

    UEFA's premier futsal competition is the UEFA Futsal Cup, a tournament started in 2001 which replaced the former Futsal European Clubs Championship. This event, despite enjoying a long and well-established tradition in the European futsal community, dating back to 1984, was never recognized as official by UEFA.

    Sponsors

    The UEFA Champions League current main sponsors are:

  • Nissan
  • Gazprom
  • Heineken (excluding France, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey, where alcohol sponsorship is restricted. In France, Switzerland, some parts of Spain and Turkey, the Heineken boarding is replaced by an "Enjoy responsibly" or "open your world" hoarding, and in Kazakhstan and Russia, the Heineken hoarding is replaced by a "Respect" hoarding.)
  • MasterCard
  • Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
  • PlayStation is the brand advertised.
  • Sony Xperia
  • UniCredit
  • PepsiCo
  • Gatorade
  • The UEFA Champions League sponsors are also sponsors of the UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Women's Champions League and the UEFA Youth League (excluding Heineken, which is replaced by Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer.)

    The UEFA Europa League current main sponsors are:

  • Hankook,
  • UniCredit
  • FedEx
  • Enterprise Rent-a-Car
  • Adidas is a secondary sponsor and supplies the official match ball and referee uniform for all UEFA competitions.

    Corruption and controversy

    Dissatisfied fans across Europe have referred to the organisation as UEFA mafia, including in Russia’s top league, in Bulgaria’s top league, and in a Champions League group stage match held in Sweden. The term has also been covered for its use outside of stadiums, for example during a protest in Kosovo outside an EU building following the Serbia v Albania (UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying) match.

    Following the 2015 FIFA corruption case, the current president of UEFA, Michel Platini, was also involved himself in the case. Swiss prosecutors accuse FIFA president Sepp Blatter of making a "disloyal payment" of $2m (£1.6m) to Mr Platini. Swiss attorney general, Michael Lauber, stated: "We didn't interview Mr Platini as a witness, that's not true. We investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person". Both Platini and Sepp Blatter are currently under formal investigation by FIFA's independent ethics committee. On 8 October 2015, Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days from any football-related activity.

    League revenues

    Annual revenue comparison. All figures in Euros.

    Source is the Deloitte 2015 annual report, which uses 2013–14 figures.

    World Cup participation and results

    Legend
  • 1st – Champion
  • 2nd – Runner-up
  •  3rd  – Third Place
  • 4th – Fourth place
  • QF – Quarterfinals
  • R16 – Round of 16 (since 1986: knockout round of 16)
  • R2 – Second round (for the 1974, 1978, and 1982 tournaments, which had two group stages)
  • GS – Group Stage (in the 1950, 1974, 1978, and 1982 tournaments, which had two group stages, this refers to the first group stage)
  • 1S – First Knockout Stage (1934–1938 Single-elimination tournament)
  •    — Did not qualify
  •  ×  — Did not enter / Withdrew / Banned
  •     — Hosts
  • Men

    Notes

    FIFA Confederations Cup

    Legend
  • 1st – Champions
  • 2nd – Runners-up
  • 3rd – Third place
  • 4th – Fourth place
  • GS – Group stage
  •  ••  — Qualified / Invited, but declined to take part
  •  •  — Did not qualify
  •  ×  — Did not enter / Withdrew from continental championship / Confederation did not take part
  • Q — Qualified for upcoming tournament
  •    — Hosts
  • National team rankings

  • Last updates:
  • Men's national teams – 3 September 2015 -
  • Women's national teams – 10 July 2015 -
  • * – Provisionally listed due to not having played more than five matches against officially ranked teams
  • ** – Inactive for more than 18 months and therefore not ranked
  • Gibraltar and Kosovo are not ranked as they haven't yet played any matches since their admission to FIFA on 13 May 2016.

    UEFA Executive Committee

    President
  • Aleksander Čeferin
  • Vice Presidents
  • Ángel María Villar – First Vice President
  • Marios Lefkaritis – Second Vice President
  • Giancarlo Abete – Third Vice President
  • Hryhoriy Surkis – Fourth Vice President
  • Michael van Praag – Fifth Vice President
  • Members
  • Sándor Csányi
  • Florence Hardouin
  • David Gill
  • Peter Gilliéron
  • Fernando Gomes
  • Allan Hansen
  • František Laurinec
  • Avraham Luzon
  • Borislav Mikhailov
  • Wolfgang Niersbach
  • Davor Šuker
  • Michel D'Hooghe
  • Şenes Erzik
  • Vitali Mutko
  • General Secretary (ad interim)
  • Theodore Theodoridis
  • Deputy General Secretary
    Honorary President
  • Lennart Johansson
  • References

    UEFA Wikipedia