Inter continues the sad story of the Champions League champions
Inter's recent quarter-final defeat means that no team has been crowned champions in back-to-back seasons of Europe's top tournament since it was renamed the Champions League.
The Champions League has been running since the 1992-1993 season. And from Marseille - the champions but punished, eliminated from the 1993-1994 season due to a match-fixing scandal, to Inter yesterday, there have been 18 champions of this tournament who could not defend their title in the following season.
When it was still called the European Cup, Europe's premier club competition saw many consecutive championships or more. Real Madrid won the first five seasons of the tournament. Inter also won the championship twice in a row in 1963-1964 and 1964-1965. Ajax and Bayern won the championship three times in a row from 1970/1971 to 1975-1976. In the following four seasons, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest also won the championship twice in a row.
Inter cannot escape the curse that haunts Champions League winners
18 years ago. Photo: AFP
When Milan won their second consecutive title in 1989-90, they became the 13th club in 34 seasons to successfully defend their title. But since Milan, more than two decades have passed, and neither the European Cup nor the Champions League has seen any other club achieve the feat.
There were also teams that came very close to achieving the feat, but failed in the final. Ajax defeated defending champions Milan in the 1994-95 final, but a year later, when they reached the final, the Dutch team lost to Juventus in a penalty shootout. Juventus also reached the final in the 1996-97 season, only to be defeated 1-3 by Borussia Dortmund.
MU was the most recent case that had the chance to perform the miracle but also failed. After beating Chelsea in a penalty shootout to win the title in Moscow in the 2007-2008 season, Coach Ferguson's army was present in the final the following season but was defeated 2-0 by Barca with goals from Eto'o and Messi.
Barca is a rare champion who did not qualify for the group stage the following season. In the first Champions League season, 1992-1993, Barca, as the eventual European Cup winners, still had to play and lost to CSKA Moscow in the final qualifying round. The team of coach Johan Cruyff and famous players such as Stoichkov, Michael Laudrup, Koeman, Guardiola... drew 1-1 in the first leg in Moscow, then lost 2-3 in the second leg at the Nou Camp.
After UEFA changed the Champions League format, allowing the champions to automatically enter the group stage of the following season, the period from 1997-1998 to 2003-2004 always saw the teams holding the Cup sadly leaving the game before the final. Milan was the team in those seasons that suffered this fate when they lost 4-5 on aggregate to Deportivo in the quarter-finals, despite winning 4-1 in the first leg.
From the 2004-2005 season onwards, other champions were eliminated even earlier, from the round of 16. They included Porto (2004-2005), Liverpool (2005-2006) and then Barca (2006-2007).
Since UEFA decided to expand the Champions League to allow each country to have more than one team in the 1997-1998 season, only one champion has reached the final the following season: MU in the 2008-2009 season.
According to VnExpress
