| | uefa.com - UEFA Champions League (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) |
 | | Europe's premier club competition was launched one month after UEFA's first Congress, held in Vienna on 2 March 1955 yet, curiously, the so-called "European Cup" was not a UEFA initiative. |
 | | Whereas many of UEFA's founder members were more interested in establishing a national team competition, the French sports daily L'Equipe and their then-editor Gabriel Hanot, were championing the cause for a European-wide club competition. |
 | | The major turning point in the evolution of the competition came in the 1992/93 season when the UEFA Champions League, involving a group phase in addition to the traditional knock-out elements, was officially inaugurated after a pilot group stage during the previous season. |
| www.uefa.com /competitions/ucl/history/index.html (502 words) |