As an organisation made up of national associations from both sides of the Iron Curtain, UEFA was particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of international politics. Consequently, in order to achieve one of its supporters’ main goals, that is, to establish UEFA’s authority over European football, UEFA’s leaders responded to these challenges by adopting similar strategies to those devised by FIFA in the 1930s.
But, during UEFA’s first few years, its leaders also had to negotiate the confederation’s independence from FIFA and face up to other actors who wanted to develop European football. The actions and initiatives UEFA’s main leaders employed to accomplish these aims during UEFA’s first few decades produced an organisation whose architecture and prerogatives were truly unique compared with the other European bodies created at around the same time.
6.1 Managing the Cold War Context
European countries that attended the constitutive assembly of the Group of European Football Associations
(Note In grey, countries which sent delegates to the congress. Source Map based on the Minutes of the Group of European Football Associations constitutive assembly, 22 June 1954)
economy, e.g.: European Coal and Steel Community and European Economic Free Trade Association;
culture, e.g.: European Centre for Culture (in Geneva), European Community of Writers and European Society of Culture;
technology, e.g.: European Broadcasting Union and European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations;
science, e.g.: European Organization for Nuclear Research.
In fact, European bodies were established in almost every field, a process Robert Frank called ‘Europe-organisation’ (2004, pp. 180–181), but the process was confined mostly to Western Europe and very rarely involved countries to the east of the Iron Curtain.
The supporters of a pan-European football confederation saw their project as a way of building a common understanding that would enable football to develop throughout Europe. Although this desire was based on, and probably facilitated by, Europe’s long history of football exchanges (Quin 2012; Dietschy 2015; Vonnard et al. 2016; Vonnard 2018a, see Part I),1 bringing together East and West within a single body would not be easy, because it would require reconciling vastly different views on many aspects of football2 and overcoming the deep political divisions that had led some potential member countries to break off both diplomatic and sporting relations. This was the case for Spain/Portugal and the countries of the Soviet bloc and for the two Germanys. The project’s supporters, led by Ottorino Barassi, José Crahay, Henri Delaunay, Karel Lotsy, Stanley Rous, Ebbe Schwartz and Ernst Thommen, had to deploy all their diplomatic skills and experience to overcome these obstacles (Vonnard 2017). A recurring aspect of their arguments was the idea of a ‘United Europe’,3 which Thommen celebrated in his opening address to the constitutive assembly.
In addition, Barassi, who chaired the assembly, stressed the need to take into account the special nature of the meeting when deciding whether an absent association could be represented by another association. For example, the Romanian FA was unable to send a representative to the meeting because the Swiss embassy in Bucharest refused to issue the necessary visa. As a result, the Romanians filed an official request for Czechoslovakia to be allowed to represent its interests. Barassi supported Romania’s request but felt constrained to point out that it was contrary to FIFA’s statutes. After a lengthy discussion, the assembly voted, by 14 votes to 10, with 2 abstentions, to allow Romania votes to be transferred to another association except in the election of Europe’s members to FIFA’s executive committee. Each association’s position in this close-run decision was not recorded, but it is likely that votes were split along the Cold War dividing line between East and West. This hypothesis is supported by the debate over Stanley Rous’s claim he had been requested to represent the absent Welsh FA. Thommen and Barassi supported Wales’ request, seeing it as similar to Romania’s, but the Eastern bloc associations opposed it. According to the Soviet delegate, the two cases were different because Wales, unlike Romania, had not filed an official request. The Eastern bloc’s objections were probably also a reaction to the ten votes cast against Romania’s request. Despite these objections, and undoubtedly as a way of demonstrating equality of treatment and thereby preventing the conflict spreading, Barassi decided to put Rous’ request to a vote. This time, the motion was passed by 12 votes to 9, with 4 abstentions. These two votes highlighted the divisions between East and West and their potential to prevent the group from finding a consensus. Barassi, Rous and Thommen realised that managing this situation would require a certain flexibility in interpreting FIFA’s regulations, which would need to be adapted to Europe’s political context.
Similar divisions emerged during the discussions surrounding the election of representatives to sit on FIFA’s executive committee, which is one of UEFA’s main tasks and one of the assembly’s most important functions. For the two FIFA vice-presidencies in their remit, the delegates chose continuity by electing Thommen and Lotsy, who had been FIFA vice-presidents since 1934 and 1950, respectively. As well-respected members of FIFA’s governing elite, they were considered the best candidates to represent Europe’s interests within the world governing body; however, they were also chosen because they were from small countries. In fact, the strategy of attributing key positions to leaders from small countries, such as Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, has frequently been used as a buffer to moderate the ambitions of larger powers (Fleury 2002).4 The four remaining executive committee seats were attributed to Yugoslavia’s Mihailo Andrejevic (20 votes), Italy’s Ottorino Barassi (18 votes), Sweden’s Lang (15 votes) and France’s Marcel Lafarge, who gained his seat after a second-round runoff against Hungary’s Gustav Sebes. The choice of Barassi, who had been a member of FIFA’s executive committee since 1952, and Andrejevic, who had sat on the committee from 1938 to 1948, once again shows a preference for continuity. Interestingly, these choices also covered all the regional blocs within UEFA, as Lang represented Scandinavia, Barassi could be considered to represent the Latin countries, and Andrejevic was close to the countries of the Balkans.5
FIFA executive committee members elected by the Group of European Football Associations
Leaders | Country | Function | Date first elected to the committee | Bloc represented |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Drewry | England | Vice-president | 1946 | Britisha |
Granatkine | Soviet Union | Vice-president | 1948 | Soviet Uniona |
Thommen | Switzerland | Vice-president | 1950 | None |
Lotsy | Netherlands | Vice-president | 1934 | None |
Andrejevic | Yugoslavia | Member | 1938–1948/1954 | Balkans |
Barassi | Italy | Member | 1952 | Latin |
Lafarge | France | Member | 1954 | None |
Lang | Sweden | Member | 1954 | Scandinavian |
However, the defeat of the other four candidates who had stood for election was a bone of contention for some associations. Rous immediately tried to reduce the resulting tension by proposing that the four losing candidates, Germany’s Peco Bauwens, Austria’s Josef Gerö, Spain’s Armando Munoz Calero and Sebes, be appointed directly to the European group’s executive committee, rather than having to face election. To help in their task, he suggested adding another four members to the new executive committee. The people he had in mind were Belgium’s José Crahay, France’s Henri Delaunay, Denmark’s Ebbe Schwartz and Scotland’s George Graham.6 Rous felt that Crahay and Delaunay would be valuable members of the committee because of their work on the standing committee that had laid the groundwork for the European group, whereas Schwartz and Graham had helped prepare the reforms to FIFA’s statutes. Hence, the executive committee would consist of experienced leaders who had actively participated in numerous FIFA congress and who would be able to maintain links with both the new European members of FIFA’s executive committee and South America’s football executives. In addition to creating a team capable of defending the European group’s interests, Rous’s proposal for the new executive committee was designed to avoid possible conflicts by including representatives of all the blocs within the group. The strategy Rous used to achieve this goal, which was essential for such a young and fragile body, had originally been devised by FIFA between the two world wars (Vonnard 2018a, see Sect. 1.2).
The assembly accepted Rous’ proposal, even though this meant changing the organisation’s draft statutes to increase the executive committee from six members to eight.7 In the end, making such a change was unnecessary, as both Bauwens and Munoz Calero declined the seats they were offered, possibly because of their disappointment at not being elected to FIFA’s executive committee. The two men may also have felt that positions on UEFA’s executive committee would not have enabled them to defend their association’s interests as effectively as positions of FIFA’s executive committee.8
At its first meeting, the day after the congress, the European group’s executive committee elected Ebbe Schwartz as its president. When I asked Hans Bangerter, UEFA’s secretary general from 1969 to 1989, why they chose Schwartz, he highlighted Schwartz’s pleasant personality and the fact that he was well-liked by his colleagues. More importantly, he added: ‘There was also perhaps, I don’t know, between the great personalities we mentioned earlier [Barassi, Rous and Thommen, in particular], they didn’t want a country to have too much influence […]. That’s why, I think, they chose a president from a small country’.9 Schwarz’s home country, Denmark, was not only small, it was a ‘Western neutral’ country (Hänhimaki 2015) that oscillated between non-partisanship and capitalism, so Schwartz’s appointment could be seen to symbolise consensus. Another factor in his favour was his connections with other influential figures in European football, especially Rous (1978, p. 115), but also members of FIFA’s executive committee and South America’s football executives, who he knew through his work on FIFA’s recent reforms. This made him a valuable asset in Europe’s dealings with other organisations in international football. The committee also appointed Henri Delaunay as secretary general.10 Delaunay was a logical choice for the standing committee and was an experienced administrator who had been secretary of both the French FA, since 1919, and FIFA’s Laws of the Game committee (Wahl 1989; Dietschy 2011). What is more, he had got to know most of the leading figures in European football during the two-year consultation process with European associations that had preceded the formation of the European group (see Chapters 2 and 4).
The next few years saw the different blocs within what was known as UEFA consolidate their positions on the executive committee, which was expanded to eight members by the addition of Germany’s Bauwens and Greece’s Constantin Constantaras during UEFA’s first congress, in March 1955. Bauwens’ return to prominence gave a new role to the mighty West German FA, while the election of Constantaras meant the Balkan countries were now represented on the executive committee. In addition, Alfred Frey replaced his Austrian compatriot, Joseph Gerö, who had died a few weeks earlier. The losing candidates in these elections were Spain’s Agusti Pujol and Czechoslovakia’s Josef Vogl. If Vogl had been elected, two of the executive committee’s five ordinary members would have been Eastern Europeans (the other being Sebes), so this bloc would have been over-represented compared to the other blocs within UEFA. Pujol was probably denied a seat in the interests of maintaining a good entente between members, because electing a member from a country as fiercely anti-communist as Franco’s Spain would undoubtedly have caused tension within the young UEFA.
Members of UEFA’s executive committee in 1958
Name | Country | Bloc represented | Function | Date elected to the committee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Schwartz | Denmark | Scandinavia | President | 1954 |
Sebes | Hungary | Soviet | Vice-president | 1954 |
Crahay | Belgium | Benelux | Member | 1954 |
Frey | Austria | None | Member | 1955 |
Bauwens | Germany | None | Member | 1955 |
Constantaras | Greece | Balkans | Member | 1955 |
Rylski | Poland | Soviet | Member | 1956 |
Pujol | Spain | Latin | Member | 1956 |
Rous | English | British | Member | 1958 |
Delaunay | France | None | Secretary general | 1956 |
UEFA’s desire to minimise the impact of the Cold War on its activities also influenced the choice of venues for its annual congresses. Of the six congresses held between 1955 and 1960, three (1956, 1958, 1960) were held in the same cities as FIFA’s congress, which removed the need for UEFA’s members to choose a venue and it made it easier for Eastern European delegates, especially those from the GDR,11 to obtain visas (Vonnard and Cala in press). The 1955 congress was held in Vienna, a flagship city for European football between the two world wars (Horak and Maderthaner 1997) that had the twin advantages of lying in the centre of Europe and of being a reminder of the ‘great alliance’ between the four powers that emerged victorious from World War II.12 Two years later, the congress took place in Denmark, the homeland of UEFA’s president, while the 1959 extraordinary congress was held in the secretary general’s home country, France.
Internal recruitment was another area in which UEFA took great care to facilitate dialogue between the Eastern and Western blocs. To this end, Bulgaria’s Michel Daphinov was hired as deputy secretary general in the early 1960s, and one of UEFA’s first secretaries, Ursula Krayenbuehl, was chosen because she could speak several Slavic languages.13
Three other aspects of UEFA’s work demonstrate its determination to avoid becoming embroiled in Cold War politics (Mittag 2015). First, the secretary general’s annual reports and the UEFA Bulletin not only presented UEFA’s achievements, they frequently highlighted the harmonious nature of the relationships between its member associations, while omitting or minimising any conflicts within the organisation (Mittag and Vonnard 2017). Doing so enabled UEFA to present a united image both to its members and to other stakeholders in European football (especially the press).
Second, UEFA applied the informal rule FIFA had followed since the interwar period of not interfering in the affairs of its national associations. A notable example of this is provided by Eastern Europe which saw—as in other sports (Rider 2013)—some footballers fleeing their country. Following a demand from the Hungarian FA, FIFA was forced to look into the issue, which was also raised within UEFA’s executive committee. On the eve of its 1956 congress, UEFA ruled that it was not the competent authority to deal with the matter and forwarded ‘the study of this case to FIFA, asking it to give its full attention to the player’s attitude in order to provide a useful answer to the question asked’.14 A request for clarification from a Norwegian delegate at the UEFA congress was answered by Yugoslavia’s Andrejevic, who spoke as FIFA’s representative15 because UEFA’s leaders maintained they were not the competent body to deal with the issue. Referring the matter back to FIFA was an astute way of avoiding disagreements within UEFA. Some months later, the events in Hungary led several European countries both to sever diplomatic relations with Hungary in protest at the Soviet Union’s intervention to install a new government and to accept thousands of refugees. Sporting relations with Hungary were also affected, with some countries, including Francoist Spain, which boycotted the Melbourne Olympic Games in November 1956 over Hungary’s continued participation. In February 1957, Sebes pleaded Hungary’s case and asked his colleagues on the executive committee to intervene, but UEFA once again said they were not competent to judge the case and suggested the Hungarian FA forward its request to FIFA.16
Third, when the Cold War disrupted UEFA’s activities, the executive committee rigorously applied the organisation’s statutes, so the parties concerned could not accuse it of making arbitrary decisions. Spain’s refusal to play the Soviet Union in the quarter-finals of the 1960 European Cup of Nations provides an excellent illustration of this. Spain and the Soviet Union did not have diplomatic relations, and two years earlier, the Franco regime had banned Real Madrid’s basketball team from travelling to Riga to play in the European Club Cup. The Spanish government would only agree to the match going ahead if it was played on neutral territory, a request the Soviets rejected (Simón 2015b).
UEFA’s executive committee was aware of the difficulties posed by the match between Spain and the Soviet Union and had therefore decided, a few weeks before the game was due to take place, that UEFA’s president, Ebbe Schwartz, would attend the match in Moscow as UEFA’s official representative.17 It was hoped that his presence would ensure the match went smoothly and prevent friction between the two associations. This significant gesture aimed to show how UEFA was succeeding in bringing together East and West, where other organisations had failed. Despite these attempts to calm the situation, the match was cancelled due to Spain’s last-minute refusal to travel to the Soviet Union. UEFA’s executive committee responded by strictly applying the tournament’s rules, arguing that sport should be apolitical and therefore Spain’s failure to play the match was unjustified. As a result, Spain was excluded from the competition and the Spanish FA was ordered to compensate its Soviet counterpart for the losses it had incurred. UEFA also asked the two countries to play a friendly match in the near future in order ‘to demonstrate their goodwill’.18
Thus, the members of UEFA’s executive committee, notably Schwartz, Crahay and Delaunay, dealt with the problems generated by the Cold War by insisting on the apolitical nature of sport and by applying similar strategies to those FIFA had developed to avoid and/or manage conflict (Vonnard 2018a, see Chapter 2). It was a crucial policy to reinforce the UEFA internal coherence. In the meantime, and to secure its power over European football, UEFA remained attentive to the actions of other stakeholders who might challenge its emerging monopoly.
6.2 Securing UEFA’s Position
As mentioned earlier in this book (see Sects. 2.1 and 5.1), numerous stakeholders wanted to develop exchanges within European football, in particular by creating European competitions. UEFA’s executive committee took steps to neutralise these potential competitors and thereby strengthen its monopoly over the administration of European football.
Basel XI (Switzerland), FC Barcelona (Spain); Belgrade XI (Yugoslavia); Birmingham City (England); Cologne XI (Germany); Copenhagen XI (Denmark), Chelsea (England); Ujpesti Dozsa (Hungary); Hanover 96 (Germany); Lausanne-sports (Switzerland); Leipzig XI (Germany); Olympique Lyonnais (France); Inter Milan (Italy); AS Roma (Italy); Union St-Gilloise (Belgium); Zagreb XI (Yugoslavia).
Adopting a similar format to the Champions Cup made the Fairs Cup both more dynamic and more appealing, and positioned it as a serious competitor to UEFA’s flagship competition. Hence, if UEFA wanted to extend its authority over European football, it would have to take control over the Fairs Cup and, more broadly, all European-scale tournaments. To this end, UEFA’s executive committee asked the UEFA congress, meeting in Stockholm on 4 June 1958, to modify the organisation’s statutes by adding ‘a paragraph identical in all respects to that contained in the FIFA regulations, making UEFA’s approval necessary for tournaments with more than three teams’.21 However, following a short but intense debate, the motion was withdrawn because most of UEFA’s members considered the clause too restrictive for national associations. The executive committee’s next attempt to increase its control over European competitions came a few months later, when it asked UEFA’s member associations to approve an authorisation procedure for European competitions. This procedure would require a potential competition organiser to submit an authorisation request to UEFA’s secretariat, listing ‘its Committee members’ names, the list of teams taking part in the competition, as well as the competition’s rules’.22 The executive committee would then examine the request and approve the tournament or not. UEFA’s leaders presented this procedure as a necessary response to the seemingly unending stream of new European competitions being proposed at the time, a glut Jacques Ferran described in a France Football article entitled ‘It’s raining ideas’.23 This measure would, of course, helped regulate the number of matches clubs had to play, but it would also have given UEFA more control over European football and enabled it to block possible competitors.
A few months later, UEFA’s executive committee decided to send a questionnaire to all its member associations in order to ‘establish a complete picture of the competitions’24 planned in Europe. This time, the request for more information came not only from UEFA, it was supported by several national associations, which wanted UEFA to ensure that places in competitions were awarded on the basis of objective criteria. For example, in March 1959, Rous forwarded to the executive committee a letter from the Spanish FA complaining about the arbitrary nature of team selection for the Inter-Cities Fair Cup and the fact that Spain was not represented on the organising committee. The letter also noted that the Spanish FA considered the Fairs Cup to be a friendly tournament because in order to be an official competition it would have to ‘be organised under the aegis of UEFA and not by a committee outside UEFA’s authority and discipline’.25 UEFA’s executive committee agreed with the Spanish FA’s remarks. Although UEFA did not suggest taking over the competition, it wanted clubs to obtain their national association’s approval before agreeing to take part. This objective was significant because it would link tournament participants more closely to their national associations and thereby increase UEFA’s control over how the tournament was run.
The initiatives UEFA took at the end of the 1950s enabled it to keep track of existing and projected European competitions. Over the next few years, it extended its control by giving itself the sole right to organise events involving all European countries and by not allowing clubs wishing to take part in its events to compete in non-UEFA competitions (see Sect. 8.2).
UEFA’s reaction to the creation of the International League Liaison Committee (ILLC) confirmed its intention to monopolise the administration of European football. The minutes of a FIFA executive committee meeting in April 1959 note that the heads of several national leagues would soon hold a meeting.26 It took place on 4 May, in Paris, and brought together representatives of the English, French and Italian professional football leagues. Although these leagues, some of which were created during the interwar years, recognised their national association’s authority over domestic football, they controlled their country’s professional league. By the late 1950s, they had also started running supranational tournaments, such as the Franco-Italian Friendship Cup, which was launched by the French and Italian leagues in 1958. This tournament involved around 15 clubs from the countries’ first and second divisions, which played a series of two-leg matches on three Sundays in June. Following the Cup’s second edition, discussions began on extending the competition to English and Swiss clubs.27
The meeting in Paris in May 1959 was part of this desire to strengthen the links between Europe’s professional leagues, which were looking to achieve two main goals. Their first goal was to defend clubs’ interests with respect to the national associations. For example, many clubs were concerned about the increasing number of international matches being played because they were expected to make their players available free of charge and with the risk that players would come back tired or injured.28 Second, they were looking for new sources of revenue to cover the ever-rising costs associated with professionalism (Dietschy 2010, see Chapter 8; Vonnard 2012, see Part I). One way to do this was to create new club competitions that would enable them to play more European matches. These prospects posed a serious threat to the power of the national associations and, ultimately, to UEFA.
The Paris meeting resulted in the professional leagues appointing Luigi Scarambone, the secretary of the Italian Football League, as their secretary. Scarambone immediately began organising a second meeting, to which he invited several leagues that had not been in Paris. These initial discussions seem to have involved only professional or semi-professional leagues, as the meeting did not include any representatives from either Scandinavia or the Soviet bloc, where all football was officially amateur.29 For countries such as Spain, which had no specific body to manage professional football, Scarambone contacted the national association.30 These contacts ensured UEFA remained abreast of the leagues’ actions, as the Spanish FA kept UEFA’s secretary, Pierre Delaunay, informed of Scarambone’s actions. In the end, the Spanish FA decided not to take part in the discussions because they felt they would undermine what UEFA was trying to achieve. Nevertheless, the other leagues continued their efforts and scheduled a new meeting for 26 October 1959, in London.
This meeting officially established the ILLC. Its members were all professional leagues, but the presence at the meeting of representatives from Austria and Switzerland suggests that it was already considering including semi-professional leagues. According to Jacques Ferran, this shift in direction occurred because ‘countries where professional clubs did not have any autonomous organisation, such as Greece, Sweden, Holland, Belgium and even Spain, were following the new organisation’s actions with great attention. It also seemed to be the case of Eastern Europe.’31 His remark highlights the variety of actors involved in European football, as, even in Spain, the managers of major clubs such as Real Madrid and FC Barcelona were likely to have been interested in this initiative. A few days after the London meeting, Scarambone sent UEFA’s secretary the League Committee’s statutes, which laid out its three objectives.32 They were to examine issues relating to the professional leagues; to ‘facilitate relations between the Leagues and the Clubs that belong to them within the framework of their respective federations and FIFA’33; and to actively support and defend the agreements reached. These objectives were all quite modest and did not include creating new competitions.
By the autumn of 1959, a new and relatively well-structured European football organisation had been created. It had an executive committee, composed of France’s Jean-Bernard Dancausse, England’s Joseph Richard, Italy’s Giuseppe Pasquale and a Scot who had not yet been appointed, an annual general meeting and a small budget, initially provided by contributions from its members. Although the ILLC said it would abide by FIFA, UEFA and national association regulations, it still posed a threat to UEFA’s monopoly over the administration of European football. UEFA’s executive committee initially accepted the ILLC as long as it ‘does not interfere in any way with UEFA’s authority and competence’.34 FIFA’s executive committee adopted a similar position and took ‘note of the Leagues’ draft statutes and considers that as long as they respect their respective national associations as the sole and supreme authority for international relations and as long as they respect the statutes and regulations of their national associations as well as those of FIFA, it is not necessary to intervene’.35
The ILLC quickly began launching initiatives, including creating the Alpine Cup, a competition for clubs from Italy and Switzerland that was created in the summer of 1960. These initiatives triggered an immediate reaction from UEFA’s leaders, who felt that ‘some national leagues, members of the International Liaison Committee of Football Leagues, are trying to take over the duties and rights of national associations’.36 They therefore set up a commission, consisting of Bauwens, Crahay, Schwartz and Pujol, to clarify the situation and began closely monitoring the ILLC’s actions. FIFA’s executive committee addressed the issue again in August 1960, at which time Ernst Thommen noted that he had written to the new body, inviting it to contact UEFA and not to go too far by not respecting the interests of the international federations.37 Further discussions ensued, at the end of which UEFA decided to incorporate the ILLC (see Sect. 8.2).
By the early 1960s, UEFA had secured its position as the governing body for European football and contained or quashed the actions of other football stakeholders. However, football’s popularity meant it was also of great interest to European organisations outside football which were establishing themselves at the same time as UEFA. Perhaps the most important of these organisations with respect to UEFA was the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
6.3 European Dialogue: UEFA-EBU Exchanges
Twenty years after the first programmes had been broadcast, sales of television sets were now increasing and television was starting to emerge as an important medium (Bignell and Fickers 2008). Television’s proponents believed that the best way to encourage the new medium’s growth was to cover subjects of interest to large sections of society. One of these subjects was football, which was not only popular, it was also well suited to television because the field of play can be covered using just one or two cameras positioned high in the stadium, it is slower and easier to film than many other sports, and there was a large number of international matches for broadcasters to choose from. In 1953, the owners (and families and friends) of the United Kingdom’s two million television sets were able to watch the FA Cup final live on television (Haynes 2008). The previous year, fans had been able to enjoy live coverage of the first match between France and Germany since the end of the war (Tétart 2018). This match and its coverage aroused so much interest that several thousand television sets were sold in the run up to the game.
Exchanging international television programmes was first suggested in 1951 by a Swiss European Broadcasting Union executive called Marcel Bezençon. EBU was founded one year before by the countries of the Western bloc, which had left the International Radio Union (IBU), created after World War II, because of the Cold War (Heinrich-Franke 2012, p. 35). Consequently, as in other fields, there was an East–West divide in telecommunications. The EBU, which was based in Geneva and had a technical centre in Brussels, was set up to defend the interests of national television channels and provide a forum for discussing issues relating to television. The idea of sharing programmes was quickly added to these objectives and first tested in June 1953 by simultaneously broadcasting Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It is only natural that sport, and especially football, soon attracted the attentions of the EBU’s executives.
A key element in these discussions, which resulted in the creation of the Eurovision Network, was the opportunity to televise the 1954 World Cup.38 The importance of this event was confirmed a few months later, when the EBU’s newly created programming committee made the World Cup a central part of its ‘Summer Season of European Television Exchanges’. Seven countries broadcast ten matches, notably the semi-finals and finals (Meyer 2016, pp. 50–52), which meant that nearly a third of the matches were broadcast live. This enthusiasm for international television coverage was not confined to football; it also extended to other sports, including cycling, which saw several live broadcasts from the 1954 Tour de France.39 At the end of the 1954 World Cup, the chairman of the EBU’s programming committee, Marcel Bezençon, stressed the importance of football in launching international television exchanges, saying: ‘June was chosen because of the World Cup football matches that were being played in Switzerland at the time, which were, as you can image, of the greatest interest to the public’.40 At the same time, Bezençon noted the problems the project had had to overcome, including technical difficulties in transmitting pictures and sound live, and the sometimes limited technical capacity of the participating national broadcasters. In addition, negotiating an agreement with FIFA over how the tournament should be televised had not been easy, due to its concerns, shared with other football bodies, about the effects of televising matches.
A national association may only allow the [broadcasting] of an international match with the permission of the association it receives.
The organising national association must ensure that the match is broadcast only within the borders of its country.
It may not allow the [broadcasting] of the match in another country without the consent of the latter’s national association.43
The decisions taken at this congress, which UEFA’s executive committee referred to as the ‘Vienna Agreements’, showcased the organisation’s role as a discussion forum for national associations. However, one of UEFA’s limitations was that the executive committee could only make recommendations, as there was no mechanism for compelling member associations to apply its decisions.44 Nevertheless, the national associations appear to have followed UEFA’s recommendations regarding television, as, in his address to the 1956 congress, UEFA’s president acknowledged the ‘great services rendered by the proper implementation [of the decisions taken] in Vienna’.45 This comment suggests that member associations had sufficient regard for UEFA to respect its decisions.
Initially, the main issue in televising football was the relationship between national football associations and broadcasters in their home countries. This changed at the beginning of 1956, when the EBU approached UEFA about the possibility of covering the European Champion Clubs’ Cup, just a few months after it had been launched (Vonnard and Laborie 2019, pp. 114–115). The EBU had moved so swiftly to televise the competition because they saw it as an excellent way of growing the Eurovision network. First, televising football matches was relatively cheap and therefore provided a way of offering programmes to broadcasters with limited resources.46 Just as importantly, sports events such as the Champions Cup were extremely popular, so televised matches would undoubtedly attract large audiences. Obtaining the television rights to the Champions Cup also allowed the EBU to protect its interests against what the January–February 1956 edition of its Bulletin described as ‘the attempts that certain private bodies appear to be making to secure exclusive television rights for certain international sporting events’.47 In other words, the EBU wanted to consolidate its position as a broadcaster of European sports events and to do this they had to work with international sports organisations. Covering the Champions Cup would also contribute to its societal goal of using international television exchanges to strengthen ties between the peoples of Europe. The heads of the EBU’s programming committee, especially its chairman, Marcel Bezençon, firmly supported this idea, so this was probably at least a contributing factor in the decision to televise the competition.
A delegation of senior EBU executives, notably Bezençon and Eurovision’s technical advisor, Georges Straschnov, met with UEFA’s executive committee on 19 March 1956. Their discussions led to an agreement to form a collaborative relationship ‘taking into account their respective interests’.48 In particular, UEFA agreed to inform the EBU of all matches involving national teams that were likely to be of interest to it, so the EBU could then contact the relevant national association in order to negotiate terms for televising the match. In the case of the Champions Cup, for which the EBU could deal directly with UEFA, the EBU would tell UEFA which matches it was interested in, and UEFA, as the competition organiser, would then discuss the matter with the appropriate member associations. However, implementing the agreement proved difficult. In the EBU Bulletin of May–June, Bezençon noted the problems Eurovision was having in its discussions with UEFA’s leaders ‘with[whom] we can gradually reach a good understanding. It will be slow. But why would you want to skip the steps?’49 UEFA’s 1956 congress saw television coverage as an excellent means of publicising football and decided to extend the Vienna Agreements.50 It also passed two motions regarding the broadcasting of Champions Cup matches. First, it decided that television broadcasters would have to pay compensation for any loss of income due to reduced attendances at matches. Second, and more importantly, they agreed to distribute the revenues obtained from television rights between the clubs and UEFA, with the clubs receiving two-thirds of the sum and UEFA receiving the remaining third. UEFA’s leaders were gradually realising the contribution television could make to financing the organisation’s activities.
The first final of the Champions Cup, in which Real Madrid beat Reims in Paris, was broadcast just a few days after the UEFA congress and provided a glimpse of the role television would play in the years to come. The Eurovision network broadcast the full match in France and the second half in Germany and Switzerland. Nearly two million people watched the match in France,51 leading Marcel Leclerc, the editor of Télé-Programme magazine, to write: ‘television was in the spotlight that evening. Let me repeat: several million people applauded both the winners and, unconsciously perhaps, the incredible magic, the excessive power of television’.52 Despite this success, the EBU Bulletin for July–August 1956 noted the failure to reach agreement with UEFA on the financial terms for broadcasting the competition. In addition to the financial aspect, broadcasting matches posed a number of technical problems. For several months, there was no contact between the EBU and UEFA, but that did not prevent Champions Cup matches being televised by national television broadcasters because clubs, with their national association’s agreement, were free to negotiate contracts for all their matches apart from the final. Consequently, the 1957–1958 tournament rules took into account the possible broadcasting of matches and included the measures taken in Lisbon a few months earlier.53
As in 1954, the 1958 World Cup, in Sweden, gave new impetus to the televising of football. Following intense negotiations between FIFA and the EBU, Eurovision was given the right to broadcast the competition. The agreement included placing a relay station in Denmark, which then failed to qualify for the finals. As a result, the Danish FA refused to broadcast World Cup matches in Denmark in order to avoid competition with the friendly matches Denmark’s national side was due to play at the same time. UEFA’s congress, held in Stockholm during the World Cup, once again addressed the issue of televising football matches. After a lengthy debate, the delegates took two important decisions. First, they agreed to use some of the revenues from television rights to set up a fund to help teams travel to UEFA’s annual International Youth Tournament.54 Second, in line with the desire to structure UEFA’s activities, they made the ‘study group for television issues’ an official body.55 Composed of three of UEFA’s most experienced leaders—Belgium’s José Crahay, England’s Stanley Rous and UEFA’s secretary general, Pierre Delaunay—its role was to determine UEFA’s best interests vis-à-vis television companies. As well as enabling UEFA to monitor negotiations with television broadcasters, creating this study group showed organisations outside the world of football that UEFA was the central body in European football.
At the same time, the EBU was also working to improve its links with sports organisations. To this end, it sought legal advice on the issue of remunerating sports organisations for the right to broadcast events controlled by these organisations. According to its legal experts, remuneration is justified for events held in an enclosed space and involving paid admission.56 In addition, in 1959, the programming committee asked Peter Dimmock, who had worked with the EBU almost since its inception, to take on the role of ‘sports advisor’.57 These preparations, combined with the fact that Eurovision was now well established, having produced almost 300 programmes in 1959,58 put the EBU in a stronger position from which to negotiate with UEFA.
By the end of the 1950s, UEFA and the EBU were ready to reach agreement on the broadcasting of European football matches. The 1959–1960 Champions Cup had underlined the popularity of televised football, with large audiences for the 12 matches (out of a total of 52 matches) that were broadcast live.59 The final was particularly popular, especially in Germany, Belgium and France. Immediately after this match, UEFA and EBU signed an agreement for televising the finals of the 1961 Champions Cup (Vonnard and Laborie 2019, pp. 117–118).
In a paper published in 2013, Jürgen Mittag and Jörg-Uwe Nieland’s (2013) outlining the main phases of UEFA’s collaboration with the EBU from the 1950s to the 1990s and showed that UEFA’s aims during its discussions with the EBU went beyond football to encompass greater European cooperation in general. In fact, through its work administering an extremely popular sport that involved frequent exchanges between people from across Europe and which transcended the Iron Curtain, UEFA quickly established itself as an actor in the process of European integration.
6.4 An ‘Atypical Actor’ in European Cooperation
In a paper summarising his doctoral thesis, Gabriel Bernasconi (2010) noted that the IOC has been an ‘atypical’ actor in international relations since 1945, due to its ability to get governments to talk to each other, even when they are on opposite sides of a political divide. As I discuss in the following pages, UEFA has played a similar role in Europe and the way it has used its position, most notably as the organiser of the Champions Cup, has made it an atypical actor in European cooperation.
When L’Équipe’s journalists first proposed a European champions’ cup, it was intended to fulfil both economic (increase newspaper sales) and sporting (raise the standard of French football by playing foreign clubs) objectives, but it also had a political objective (bring Europe together) because they intended the competition to cross the East–West divide. In fact, both Jacques Goddet and Jacques de Ryswick refer to this political objective in their autobiographies (De Ryswick 1962; Goddet 1991), as did Jacques Ferran during the interviews conducted for the present research and when he spoke to Antoine Maumon de Longevialle (2009, p. 42). The first draft of the competition’s regulations, drawn up in February 1955, lists countries from throughout Europe, including both sides of the Iron Curtain (see Sect. 5.3).
UEFA, which took over the Champions Cup in June 1955, also saw it as a means for bringing together nations from both sides of the Iron Curtain and therefore included all the teams pre-selected by L’Équipe, with the only changes being those made due to last-minute withdrawals. The tournament’s very first match, in September 1955, proved the Cup’s ability to create connections across Europe’s political divide by bringing together Partizan Belgrade, from Yugoslavia, and Sporting Lisbon, from Portugal. Given the political gulf between Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s anti-communist government in Portugal (Pinto 1999) and Marshal Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia, which considered Portugal to be a fascist country, organising such a match would have seemed a daunting task.
However, by the mid-1950s, it looked as if it might be possible to get the two governments to agree to the game. The process was facilitated by the fact that Portugal was not isolated internationally and played an active role in many international and European organisations (it was a member of NATO and helped found the European Free Trade Association in 1958). Moreover, according to scholars who have studied Portuguese football, the people’s game was not an important issue for Salazar (Léonard 2011, p. 251), so even though a victory would provide good political propaganda, Sporting Lisbon was not seen as representing the state or as an emblem of the regime’s strength (Pereira 2016). This match also provides a good illustration of the general atmosphere surrounding the competition because it was not the result of a random draw; it was freely agreed by the clubs’ representatives when the tournament was launched by L’Équipe in Paris in April 1955 (Vonnard 2012, p. 119). The Sporting Lisbon-Partizan Belgrade match enabled UEFA to show that it truly was a forum for Europe’s national football associations and capable of promoting East–West rapprochement.
UEFA was given another opportunity to prove itself in this domain a few weeks later, when Partizan Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s flagship team, was drawn to play Real Madrid, the emblem of Franco’s Spain, in the quarter-finals (Gonzalez-Calleja 2006). For Jacques Ferran, who made the draw, this was ‘an explosive and slightly worrying game’60 because the Spanish government saw football as a symbolic battleground in the fight against communism, a view that was reinforced by the defection of several Eastern Europe players to Spain during the 1950s. Given the government’s position, Spain’s national team had never played a team from the other side of the Iron Curtain. What is more, Spain and Yugoslavia had broken off diplomatic relations in the 1930s, and the climate between the two countries remained unconducive to sporting exchanges. Hence, when the draw was made, there was no guarantee the two-leg fixture would go ahead and UEFA realised it would have to work hard to ensure the matches were played. To this end, UEFA’s secretary general, Pierre Delaunay, invited Real Madrid’s senior executives to Paris on 11 November 1955 for the France-Yugoslavia match and so they could meet Andrejevic.61 The meeting appears to have been a success, as dates were set for both matches, an issue that had not been settled at the draw in Paris on 4 November because too many of the clubs involved were absent. The two sides also discussed ways of ensuring the fixture went smoothly. Given the lack of sources, it is difficult to be certain, but they appear to have found common ground.
One of the main problems was obtaining visas for members of both clubs. Finally, a solution was found by going through the two countries’ embassies in Paris. Following this agreement, Jean-Philippe Réthacker wrote in L’Équipe: ‘Everyone will be delighted, throughout the world, to learn that sport has succeeded where everyone else has failed’.62 Both matches were played without any problems and they even enabled political leaders from the two countries to meet. According to France Football’s report following the first match: ‘In the euphoria of the discussion, the Yugoslav president went so far as to say to the Spanish representative: “I even believe that there is a Yugoslav consulate in Madrid, but since it is unused it will have to be repaired”’.63 While this comment should be taken with a pinch of salt, it supports the assertion made by many other scholars that sport can foster political dialogue (e.g. Gounot et al. 2007). These exchanges continued during the return match in Belgrade, to which Spain sent, with Yugoslavia’s consent, an unusually large delegation containing 60 members, presented by the French press as supporters of Real Madrid, in addition to the Madrid team.64
Clubs that took part in the second edition of the Champions Cup (Interestingly, this map does not show the border between East and West Germany. Was this an oversight or does it represent UEFA’s vision of Europe at the time?)
(Source Map published in the UEFA Official Bulletin, Issue 6, November 1957)
According to Juan Antonio Simón (2015), when Raimundo Saporta, Real Madrid’s treasurer and a pillar of the International Basketball Federation, travelled with Real Madrid to Moscow in 1962, the first official visit to the Soviet Union by a Spanish delegation, he reported back to the Francoist government on living conditions in the country. It seems likely that officials accompanying clubs across the Iron Curtain for Champions Cup matches would have carried out similar actions.
These matches provided informal opportunities for meetings between countries which did not have diplomatic relations, with discussions taking place during associated festivities (visits, dinners), as well as during the matches. Consequently, the Champions Cup must be assessed in the light of history’s recent reappraisal of the Cold War, which shows that the ‘two blocs were certainly divided, but not disconnected’ (Hochscherf et al. 2010).65 Adopting this perspective means examining the different ways in which the two blocs cooperated (still largely underestimated) throughout the Cold War. UEFA seems to have been at the forefront of these ‘behind-the-scenes’ exchanges in Europe, as the Champions Cup and subsequent UEFA competitions provided a regular platform for meetings between East and West.