The UEFA Plaque was a honorific award given by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to those clubs that had won, at least once, the title in each of the three major international competitions organised by that confederation, namely the European Champions Cup, the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup.[1][2] It was officially established in late 1987[3] and its first award was given in the second half of the following year, with Italian Juventus being the club to be honoured. A second award was initially scheduled for the second half of 1992 in favour of Dutch side Ajax, but it was not conferred for unclarified reasons by the confederation[4] after Spanish team Barcelona —who did not comply with the requirement imposed by UEFA— at the same time unsuccessfully applied to European football's governing body for such recognition,[4] being subsequently discontinued.
Background
Between 1971 and 1999, UEFA organised three major competitions —the European Cup, Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup— which were played as part of the international fixture calendar.[5][a] While all three carried prestige in their own right,[8] the European Cup, which was the competition for clubs that had won their own domestic league title, was considered as the most prestigious, while the UEFA Cup, in which teams that finished just below the domestic league champion were generally entered, was regarded as the hardest to win.[9]
The European Cup (left), the Cup Winners' Cup (middle), and the UEFA Cup (right) trophies, assembling the European Treble.[10]
At the start of the 1984–85 season, two clubs —Juventus and Hamburg SV— had won two of the three European competitions each, and each was competing that season in the competition that they needed to win to complete the set; Juventus in the European Cup and Hamburg in the UEFA Cup. Hamburg were eliminated in the third round of the UEFA Cup, while Juventus reached the 1985 European Cup final, winning the game 1–0 to become the first club to have won all three of UEFA's major competitions.[11]
In December 1987, the UEFA organising committee proposed in Zürich the institution of a special award for clubs that had won all three competitions.[10] Having been ratified, it was announced it would be awarded for the first time to all eligible clubs at the UEFA meeting planned for May 1988.[12] While Anderlecht in European Champions' Cup and Milan AC in UEFA Cup during the 1987–88 season were potentially in a position to match Juventus' achievement, being both eliminated in the quarter-finals and in the second round, respectively;[13] when the new UEFA Plaque was finally conferred in July 1988, it was to Juventus alone that it was awarded.[14][15][16] In a similar situation were both Ajax and Bayern Munich, which unsuccessfully participated in the 1988–89 UEFA Cup.[17]
Description
The award consists of a rectangular silver plaque on which are superimposed silhouettes of three trophies that represent the tournaments mentioned, above a golden laurel wreath and the European football government body badge, also in gold.[18][19][20] Also, the plaque have the following inscription in French, then the confederation's leading administrative language,[b] which translated to English:
Hommage L'UEFA au Juventus F.C. Premier club ayant remporté les trois competitions inter-clubs de l'UEFA Coupe des Clubs Champions Européenns Coupe des Vainqueurs de Coupe Européenne Coupe UEFA.
Tribute The UEFA to Juventus F.C. First club to have won the three international UEFA club competitions European Champion Clubs' Cup European Cup Winners' Cup UEFA Cup.[22]
In July 1992, after winning the European Champions' Cup, then FC BarcelonapresidentJosep Lluís Núñez requested of UEFA a similar recognition, stating that his club had equalled Juventus' record, having won formerly the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup. European football's governing body, now led by Lennart Johansson, who replaced Georges in the charge, rejected it because the Spanish club had never won the UEFA Cup proper, and UEFA does not recognize its predecessor, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, previously won by the Blaugrana, as an official competition.[4] Eight months later, Johansson proposed, unsuccessfully, to merge all three seasonal competitions in a unique pan-European championship which the better teams in the continent would be involved.[23]
Since UEFA awarded Juventus with the UEFA Plaque, four other clubs have won the three seasonal European competitions: Ajax (1992, to whom the recognition was initially scheduled after their triumph in 1991–92 UEFA Cup, notwithstanding the confederation latter decided not to award them for unknown reasons),[4] Bayern Munich (1996), Chelsea (2013), and Manchester United (2017).
^From 1955 to 1971 each seasonal competition was regulated by its own committee. From 1972 onwards a single committee assumed responsibility for the three competitions.[6] The Intercontinental Cup and the UEFA Super Cup not have a defined date in the international calendar until 1980 and 1998, respectively, and so in some cases these didn't carried out.[7]
^At the time, UEFA's administrative languages were French, English and German, being the first cited the most widely used.[21]
^"UEFA club competitions"(PDF). Union des Associations Européennes de Football. 25 August 2006. p. 23. Archived(PDF) from the original on 8 April 2008. Retrieved 15 November 2009.
^"Per me i miliardi valgono ancora, non li butto". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). 13 July 1988. p. 28. it: [...] ha ricevuto una targa dell'UEFA, destinata alla Juve, unica squadra in Europa ad aver vinto tutte le coppe. [[...] he received a UEFA plaque for Juve, the only team in Europe to have won all the cups.]
^"Juventus: Unica squadra premiata dall'UEFA". Hurrà Juventus (in Italian). Vol. 1. January 1988. pp. 42–43. ISSN1594-5189.
^Georges, Jacques (2 May 1986). "Bienvenue à Lyon". Finale de la Coupe des Vainqueurs de Coupe Européenne(PDF) (Programme officiel) (in French). Lyon: Union des Associations Européennes de Football. Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 April 2016.
